


The Oncoming Storm

by mountain_born



Series: The Marvelous Tale of an Agent, an Archer, and an Assassin [8]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Doctor Who/Avengers Crossover Fusion, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-19
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-08 22:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/766689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountain_born/pseuds/mountain_born
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson, Clint, and River are faced with a ticking clock, an abducted child, and a hurricane about to crash into the coast.  When the mission starts calling up some old ghosts from River's past, it starts to look like the oncoming storm may be the least of their problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is the moment that I, as the writer, have really been looking forward to; getting to be able to dig more deeply into AU-River's background and history. I should say that, in Whovian fashion, I'm playing a little fast and loose with Amy and Rory's timeline for the sake of making stories in this 'verse work. But it's nothing wildly out of left field and nothing that really alters their canon. You know, any more than I already have.
> 
> This story will be broken into six chapters. I'll post a new chapter on Fridays and Tuesdays (as I frantically work on the next installment in the series, _Halfway Out Of The Dark._ )
> 
> Major kudos to **like_a_raven** who did an amazing betaing job, as always. **l_a_r** , I'm still working on that Interpretive Dance of Gratitude. The choreography is coming along nicely. Actually getting Jeremy Renner to perform it is going to take a bit more doing.

_Tuesday, July 22, 2008_  
 _1410 Hours_  
 _Dallas, Texas_

Clint Barton always had been able to see better from a distance.

He leaned his elbows casually on the chest-high wall of the balcony that overlooked the main lobby of ARCH Tech’s corporate headquarters. It had been set up for an event this afternoon, some sort of employee appreciation thing. It was a casual family affair: spouses, kids, the works. People circulated between the air-conditioning indoors and the tents, barbeque grills, and activities set up outside.

It might be normal. Clint wouldn’t really know. SHIELD didn’t go in much for employee family summer picnics, but then SHIELD wasn’t exactly a good yardstick by which to measure _normal_. Either way, the sight of so many people coming and going freely made him a little bit twitchy, just given ARCH Tech’s business. The firm handled network security for a number of high-level, confidential clients, the kind whose names didn’t get printed in the quarterly reports.

Clients like SHIELD.

Still, Clint knew that the free-for-all was just the lobby. The parts of the building where the real business went down were very well secured. Even from his vantage point, glancing toward the upper floors, he could see guard stations, card readers, and doors outfitted with scanners. The picnic wasn’t compromising security and it had made it very easy for him and the others to visit the building today without arousing comment or notice. 

He spotted Coulson (who was wearing khakis, of all damn things) standing over by a large potted tree and holding a plastic cup of something violently pink. He looked perfectly at home. Agent Angela Moretti, who was with him, did not. She was holding herself a little too stiffly and her smile was a little too bright. Clint saw Coulson lean over and say something to her. Moretti nodded and took a large drink from her own cup. She managed to look a little more relaxed after that.

Clint shook his head. Moretti was a great analyst. She’d graduated with honors from MIT and SHIELD had recruited her straight out of her graduate program. She could find virtually any piece of information if given enough time and an internet connection. She wasn’t a field agent, though, let alone a covert operative.

River, on the other hand, was blending in nicely. She was perched on the side of a fountain down in the lobby, talking to one of ARCH Tech’s younger male employees. Well, Clint amended, the guy seemed to be doing most of the talking. Whatever he was holding forth on must have been fairly tedious. Clint could tell that River was annoyed and impatient just from the set of her shoulders, though he doubted Pocket Protector could.

After a moment, she glanced directly up at Clint and he saw a tiny, wry smile turn up the corners of her mouth for just a second before she went back to pretending to care about what Pocket Protector was saying.

River always did know when he was watching her. She’d had that trick down for a long time, but ever since the Chicago mission, seven months ago, it was like she knew when he was _thinking_ about watching her.

Clint’s eyes moved on to the welcome station by the bank of elevators where Mr. and Mrs. Ramirez were standing. Daniel Ramirez was the founder and president of ARCH Tech. He and his wife, Cassandra, were a big deal in Dallas society. They provided one of the city’s major sources of employment, were active in their church, and supported half a dozen high-profile charitable organizations. 

Watching Mr. and Mrs. Ramirez smile and make small talk with the employees and their families, Clint had to give them credit. For civilians, they put up a decent front. You couldn’t tell to look at them that their only child had been stolen right out of her bed twelve hours earlier.

Of course, the kid’s life depended on that. According to the briefing that they’d had with Fury that morning, Ava Ramirez’s kidnappers had had two very specific demands. The first was that Daniel Ramirez would provide them, by Friday at noon, with backdoors into some of SHIELD’s more sensitive databases. The second was that they go about their daily business as if nothing at all was amiss. No notifying the police, no contacting the press, nothing. Failure to meet either demand would mean that their daughter was dead. The kidnappers apparently didn’t want the inconvenience of a media frenzy.

 _Shy bastards_ , Clint thought.

But as far as Clint could tell, they were shy bastards who weren’t currently here. He’d been watching and no one seemed to be following the Ramirezes. Clint spent enough time doing surveillance that he was good at picking other spies out of a crowd. The kidnappers might be watching the media for a public eruption, but he was confident that they didn’t have someone tailing Mr. and Mrs. Ramirez to make sure they didn’t step out of line.

Still, it didn’t hurt to be careful. That was why the SHIELD agents were using today’s event to sneak in under the radar.

Clint heard a tell-tale bit of static and then Coulson’s quiet voice over the comm. _“All right. Start moving toward the east wing conference rooms. They’ll have about half an hour before they’re due on their next mark.”_

As Clint started down the stairs back to the main lobby level, he saw River gracefully extricate herself from her admirer and start walking casually toward the designated meet-up point. Clint followed at a distance. His path took him by the elevators where Mrs. Ramirez was speaking to another woman who had three bored-looking kids in tow.

“Ava’s not with us, today?” the woman was asking.

Mrs. Ramirez laughed brightly. “No. She’s out visiting my sister in San Diego. I know she’s disappointed to miss the picnic, but she’s having a wonderful time.”

Clint passed the elevators and turned down a corridor. With any luck, they’d make sure Ava Ramirez’s “vacation” was a short one.

*****

River watched Daniel and Cassandra Ramirez as they talked to Coulson. Now that they were safely hidden away in a conference room and not in public playing host and hostess to their guests, both showed considerable signs of strain. Mr. Ramirez slumped in his chair, looking like he hadn’t slept in a week. Mrs. Ramirez, on the other hand, was sitting very straight, her hands clenched tightly on the table in front of her. River suspected that the woman had taken a heavier hand with her makeup than she normally might, especially around the eyes.

Both looked as if they might crack apart if the wrong pressure point were pressed.

River wondered if this was what it had been like for Amy and Rory. 

What it _would be_ like for Amy and Rory.

Tense could be a complicated thing for River. The Amy Pond and Rory Williams of 2008 were still a few years away from having and losing a child. Of course, from River’s perspective, it was long gone history.

It had been different, her own kidnapping all those years ago. The Academy hadn’t taken her as leverage, and they hadn’t taken her with any intention of harming her. Not directly, at any rate. She had been too important for that. Special. She had been the Academy’s hoped-for savior. The Girl Who Would Defeat the Doctor.

They had entrusted her to the care of her foster parents, Robert and Elizabeth MacDonald, two of their most decorated Anglican Marines, both of them highly ranked within the Church. The Academy had hidden them all away in Time to let Melody Pond grow up and learn the skills she would need. They had wanted her raised in the “proper environment” and had chosen Scotland of the 1930s as the new little family’s destination point. Scotland had been chosen because of Amy Pond, River had long since surmised. From what she knew of her biological mother, Amy was rather aggressively Scottish.

As for the era? Given what they had been raising her to be, River thought that the Academy couldn’t have chosen a better point in time for her to spend her formative years in. She had been seven years old when Great Britain had gone to war with Germany. The entire country had pulled together to do their duty, make sacrifices, and work hard so that a great force of evil could be brought down. It had meant that she had never felt that anything about her own upbringing was all that unusual. 

River hadn’t even known that she’d been kidnapped until…well, until eight years ago when Melody Pond had “died” for the fourth and final time, and River Song had been born. She’d spent decades being told, and unquestionably believing, that she had been abandoned by her parents. That the Doctor, out of fear and maybe a little jealousy, had forced Amy and Rory to leave their baby behind on a desolate asteroid called Demon’s Run, because he had feared what his companions’ child would grow to be. She had been told how the Academy had found her and rescued her and discovered the reason for the Doctor’s fear. Melody Pond had Time and Space in her blood, just like the Doctor did, and she, above all others, might be able to one day put a stop to him.

Like many oft-told tales and deeply held beliefs, the Academy’s version of events hadn’t really stood up to the light of day.

It had taken the day of reckoning a long time to come around. The Doctor’s timing was not what one would call “convenient.” She had had to wait for almost seventy years until she could carry out her primary mission, but the time had not been wasted. Melody had learned and the Academy had watched and studied. 

In 1944, an accident that should have had tragic results had proven that she had the ability to regenerate, which as far as the Academy was concerned, opened up whole new realms of possibility. She had been through the regeneration process four times over the course of her life. It had never gotten any more pleasant and had the annoying side effect of dialing her physical age back every time. It was disconcerting to go from an outward age of thirty to an outward age of thirteen. But it had extended her life and helped her work toward her ultimate purpose. She’d learned to be a spy, and then she’d learned to be a soldier. The Academy had found other missions for her that would help her use her skills, honing and hardening her. 

They had succeeded perhaps a little too well. After years and years, mission after mission, and the passing of Robert and Elizabeth, the Academy had been left with a fairly single-minded assassin. Independent. Calculating. Self-sufficient. Merciless. The Academy had been pleased. She was ready.

Eight years ago, Melody Pond had finally faced the Doctor. River had never quite been clear on how he had finally tracked her down. She suspected that the TARDIS might have had a conscious hand in how and where their paths had crossed. But there he was: the Doctor with Amy and Rory. The circumstances of that meeting had involved Melody taking a stray bullet in a bad spot, which had been inconvenient. Coming right off a regeneration was not a good time to face your deadliest foe, but it couldn’t be helped. When the blaze of light had died down, Melody’s short, black hair had grown out long and golden brown, her eyes had darkened, and her physical age had been set back a good decade and a half. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory had stared at her in stunned disbelief. 

They had called her _River Song_ , as if they’d expected that name to mean something to her.

Everything had been upended for her that day. The Doctor might indeed be a force of destruction, but he hadn’t been the mindless and malicious one that the Academy had educated her about. Amy and Rory had not been enthralled and enslaved. The Academy had not been the noble rescuers. In one day, everything River had ever known or believed in had been unraveled. 

For Amy and Rory, it hadn’t been that long after she’d been stolen. Amy had had the same guilt in her eyes that River could now see in Mrs. Ramirez’s.

 _They took you away from me_ , Amy had said to her. Would say to her. _They took you right out of my arms and I couldn’t do anything to stop them, and I’m sorry._

At the end of that day, the Doctor was still alive. Or, rather, was alive again. Thanks to River Song. River, for her part, had been half-conscious in a hospital bed, and a part of her was gone. Something inside her had gone very, very quiet. River—Melody—had once told Aunt Elizabeth that the power that let her regenerate felt like carrying a hive of sleeping bees inside her chest. It only woke up when it was needed, but she had always been able to feel it, a coil of latent power. That constant humming undercurrent had been silent for the first time in almost seven decades.

She’d begun that morning with a brand new regeneration. She’d ended that day knowing it would be her last. All she’d been able to feel at the time was relief.

Amy, Rory, and the Doctor had stayed with her in the hospital for a time. River could remember hearing them talking. Hearing them get ready to leave her.

Amy hadn’t wanted to. _We’re just supposed to leave her here to fend for herself? All alone, in hospital? She’s a_ kid.

 _She_ looks _like a kid_ , Rory had said tiredly. _We know she’s not._

Amy hadn’t been willing to let it go easily. _Why? Why do we have to leave her?_ River had heard her mother say. _We don’t have to. We could take her with us. We could—_

 _We can’t_ , the Doctor had interrupted. He’d sounded half chiding, half pained at his own words. _Amy, we can’t. You know she’d never forgive us if we did that._

River hadn’t been able to figure at the time who “she” might be. She had just known that she was really and truly being left behind this time. At least they had said good-bye. River had been aware enough to feel the soft kiss on her cheek from Amy and the faintly bristly one on her temple from Rory. Then they had left and she’d been alone with the Doctor. River had felt one long, thin hand rest on her head as the Time Lord had bent low over her ear. Old training and years of ingrained instinct had made her wish she could recoil, but she hadn’t been capable of moving.

He’d halted oddly as he’d started speaking, as if his emotions were getting the better of him. Who would ever have guessed? The Doctor was capable of feeling something other than hate and arrogance.

 _There’s going to come a time_ , he’d said to her, _when you’ll think that you’re finished. When you’ll think your life is over._ River had felt him lean closer. _That will be just the beginning._ He’d stroked his hand over her hair before he’d straightened up. _I’ll see you in the future, River._

And just like that, they were all gone. 

River hadn’t gone back to what was left of the Academy’s outpost on Earth of the year 2000. She couldn’t, not after she’d killed the Doctor only to turn right around and save him. After what she had learned that day, she hadn’t wanted to, either. For all the Academy would know, Melody Pond had faced the Doctor and the Doctor had been the one to walk away. She had a newly regenerated body, a new face, and a new name. Easy enough to hide from people who wouldn’t come looking for her anyway.

For the first time in her long life, she’d been utterly and completely alone. River had decided that it would be for the best to keep things that way. One way or another, connections hurt too much and belief just led to betrayal. For five years, she’d avoided both quite handily.

Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, she hadn’t been alone anymore. She had been walking down a dark back alley in the city of Sofia when an arrow had flown across her path. River had been certain that that was the end. Her life was over. Only it wasn’t. It had only been the beginning of something she never would have expected.

River felt an arm brush hers, bringing her abruptly back to the here-and-now. She glanced over at Clint. He was looking at her with his forehead wrinkled a bit in worry. 

No. She wasn’t alone anymore.

River sat up straighter in her seat. What had happened in the past was the past. The future could only be worried over so much. 

Her partner and this case were firmly of the present. Her attention was far better spent focused on that.

*****

Daniel Ramirez went through the events of the night of his daughter’s abduction with the sort of calm Coulson had come to associate with the deeply shell-shocked.

They had put Ava to bed at seven-thirty, her usual bedtime, and looked in on her when they had turned in at a little past eleven. Nothing had been amiss in the house. 

At three o’clock in the morning, Daniel’s cell phone had gone off. 

The kidnapper had put Ava on the phone briefly before issuing the demands and instructions. Cassandra Ramirez had run to their daughter’s room to find that she was indeed gone and that the house’s security system had been overridden. Coulson made a special mental note of this; the Ramirezes wouldn’t have a half-assed system, which meant that they were dealing with someone who could get around that kind of technology. Mr. Ramirez had kept the man on the phone long enough (and kept his wits about him enough) to trace the call. Then, in spite of the warnings not to notify the authorities, he had placed a call to his contact at SHIELD. Mr. Ramirez had brought the results of the trace with him in addition to his recording of the call. He pushed the jump drive across the table to Coulson.

“You can hear two of them on the recording,” Mr. Ramirez said. “One guy, the one who did most of the talking, is American. The other one is English. You can only hear him for a few seconds.”

“Why were you set up to record and trace the call?” Coulson asked neutrally as he took the jump drive and passed it to Moretti.

While it would help them find the kidnappers, recording and tracing phone calls was not something that a person did on the fly, even a computer industry executive. Daniel Ramirez was either excessively paranoid, or he’d been expecting trouble. Or, Coulson thought, he was in on the whole thing. It just wasn’t the sort of coincidence he was prepared to accept out of hand.

“I’ve been getting harassing phone calls for the past month,” Daniel Ramirez said. “A former employee, one of my VPs that I had to let go. He never identified himself on the phone, but I knew it was him. They were upsetting Cassie and we were afraid Ava might answer one day when he called. I was trying to record them and trace them back to him to build a case for a restraining order.”

Coulson probed for more details. The disgruntled employee, Eric Dunn, had been let go because he had a growing drinking problem. “To put it mildly,” Cassandra Ramirez added brittlely. Where her husband was on the numb end of the shocked spectrum, Cassandra looked as if she was close to her breaking point. Her fingers kept worrying at a necklace that she’d tugged out of the collar of her dress: a little cross made out of plastic beads, clearly a child’s handiwork. 

“I’ll need Mr. Dunn’s address,” Coulson said.

“I really don’t think Eric’s the sort who would get mixed up with people like this,” Mr. Ramirez replied doubtfully.

“Even if he’s not, Mr. Ramirez, word somehow got out that your company does work for SHIELD,” Coulson said. “That’s not a matter of public record. Given the timing, Mr. Dunn is a potential source of the leak. We’ll check into it and after that, we’ll--”

“I still think we should call the FBI,” Mrs. Ramirez interrupted. She looked at her husband. “We can explain. They can make sure no one finds out. They can--”

“We can’t, Cassie.” Mr. Ramirez looked pained. “If we call the FBI, there’s no way it won’t leak out and then Ava’s…” He swallowed hard. “SHIELD is our best chance of getting her back.” He looked at Coulson. “You can get her back, can’t you?”

“We are going to do everything in our power to recover your daughter.”

Fury had made it very clear that this mission was top priority, though not necessarily for reasons that Coulson wanted to voice aloud to Mr. and Mrs. Ramirez. They needed to find, capture, and interrogate the men who had taken Ava to determine who exactly was willing to go to such lengths to compromise SHIELD’s security. They wanted to recover Ava Ramirez safely, of course. That wasn’t even a question, and they would be working to that end. But what they wanted to accomplish with this mission and what they _needed_ to accomplish were two very different things.

Coulson wondered if Daniel Ramirez had processed yet that by alerting SHIELD, he had lost his one piece of leverage for getting his child back. It didn’t matter now if he tried to give the kidnappers their backdoors into SHIELD’s system. Those paths had all been blocked hours ago and the whole system was being closely monitored. 

Daniel Ramirez might not have made that exact leap yet, but Coulson thought that it might have crossed Mrs. Ramirez’s mind. She looked at Coulson with an intensity that could rival Fury’s.

“How?” she asked. “How are you going to get her back?”

Dealing with upset civilians was a part of Coulson’s job. He could question, debrief, intercede, and stonewall with the best. This required something a bit outside of his usual repertoire. If there was ever a time for kid gloves, this was it. 

“Once we have a fix on their location, we’ll devise a strategy that will allow for a safe extraction,” he said.

“In other words, you have no idea,” Mrs. Ramirez replied. Her voice was starting to rise. “Do you even have any experience with something like this? How do we know that you know what you’re doing? We’re just supposed to trust you? Your agent isn’t even paying attention.”

Coulson looked across the table at Clint and River. He saw Clint subtly nudge River’s arm with a concerned frown, and River seemed to blink herself out of a daydream. Coulson frowned as well. It wasn’t like River to zone out during a briefing. She immediately sat up straight, though, with a guilty glance at Coulson before she turned her attention to Mr. and Mrs. Ramirez.

“We’ve all been trained in hostage recovery,” Coulson said, answering the most direct point of Mrs. Ramirez’s question. “And I can assure you, we’re very good at our job. The Director wouldn’t have sent us otherwise.”

Mrs. Ramirez didn’t look convinced, and while Coulson was getting Eric Dunn’s contact details from Mr. Ramirez, she silently got up and left the conference room. Her husband looked after her worriedly.

“She’s…” he began, helplessly.

“You don’t need to explain,” Coulson replied. “And it’s probably for the best if you both get back to your guests soon anyway. Before your absence becomes noticeable.”

Mr. Ramirez nodded. He reached into his jacket and pulled a photograph out of an inner pocket. He slid it across to Coulson. “Just find her. Bring her back.”

When Mr. Ramirez left, Coulson picked up the picture of the little girl with long dark pigtails and a gap-toothed smile. Ava Ramirez, age six. He clipped it into the file with the rest of their information.

“All right,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do and not much time.”

*****

Just to play it safe, the SHIELD agents didn’t want to leave the building in a suspicious-looking clump. River took the excuse to detour into the ladies room near the conference room on the way out. She needed to throw some water onto her face.

She shouldn’t have let herself sink into old memories like that. God knew, Ava Ramirez was not the first abducted or misused child to have crossed her path since she’d learned the truth about her own origins. And like Coulson had said, they had to work fast if they didn’t want this one to die.

River leaned her hands on the sink looking at her reflection in the mirror. Sometimes it was easy to pretend that this had always been what she’d looked like. Brown eyes. Light brown hair that had picked its usual gold streaks thanks to summer sun. A mouth that always had a tendency to pull up at one corner, what Clint called her _I know something you don’t know_ expression. A light dust of freckles across her nose and cheekbones. This was the first time she’d had freckles since her original incarnation. Melody the First had been all freckles and coltish limbs and long red hair.

Every now and then River wondered if that meant something, but she knew deep down that it didn’t. The results of her regenerations had always been random, at least as far as appearance went.

River blew out a deep breath. “You have got to get a grip,” she muttered to herself.

She abruptly straightened up at a soft sound that came from an alcove on the other side of the wall from the sinks. Her reaction was more or less automatic, though she felt her eyebrows go up in surprise as Mrs. Ramirez came around the corner, a smile fixed on her face.

Mrs. Ramirez looked surprised to see her as well, but immediately let the smile bleed off of her face and her shoulders slump now that she’d seen that the intruder wasn’t an ARCH Tech employee she needed to put on a show for.

“Agent Song.” She didn’t exactly look pleased by River’s presence. “Was there something else you needed me for?”

“No,” River said, shaking her head. “No, I was just on my way out, actually.”

She turned to leave the woman alone to finish collecting herself when Cassandra Ramirez stopped her. “Agent Song?”

“Yes?” River turned back.

Mrs. Ramirez stepped forward, fingers twisted together. “I’m sorry for earlier. I--.”

River was already shaking her head. “You really don’t have to apologize.” 

“Can you really do it?” Mrs. Ramirez asked. “Can you really get her back?”

River answered carefully. “We’re going to try.”

“Promise me.” Mrs. Ramirez, for a moment, looked as dangerous as any assassin River had ever crossed paths with, but it was a danger borne of desperation more than anything. “Promise me you’ll get her back.”

This was one of those moments when River wished Coulson could magically appear to handle the conversation. Coulson would know what to say. Of course, River knew what she _should_ say. They couldn’t promise any such thing and it would be a world of wrong to insinuate that they could.

River had never made a habit of doing the things she should do.

“I promise,” she said. “I’ll get her back.”

Mrs. Ramirez took a deep breath and nodded. She reached up and started fumbling with the clasp on her necklace.

“When you find her,” she said, taking the little beaded cross off and holding it out to River, “give her that. She’ll know I sent you if you give it to her.”

River hesitated only a moment before taking the necklace, tucking it safely into her pocket. With a final nod to Mrs. Ramirez, River went to rejoin her team.

*****

_Tuesday, July 22, 2008_  
 _1524 Hours_

They divided up the labor to save time.

Daniel Ramirez’s trace hadn’t been professional quality, but it had been good enough for Moretti to determine that the cell call had originated at an airfield north of the city. It was the same airfield they had flown into that morning, where the SHIELD jet was currently parked. 

“Well, the good news is we’ll be able to get the crew to help us do legwork,” Coulson said. “Moretti and I will head out there. Clint and River, you two go track down Eric Dunn. See if he’s talked to anyone suspicious.”

Eric Dunn, like the Ramirezes, lived in an affluent Dallas suburb. Dunn’s wife had divorced him two years ago and he’d alienated most of his friends. There was no activity to be seen at the house when Clint and River arrived, and no answer to the doorbell.

“There’s a car and a motorcycle parked in the garage,” Clint said, coming back from checking the windows.

“And his mail is piling up,” River replied, letting the metal flap low on the front door fall back into place. She straightened up. “Shall we secure the perimeter and invite ourselves in?”

They broke in through the back and hadn’t made it past the kitchen when the odor hit them.

“Oh, God. Do you smell that?” River asked.

“Kind of hard not to,” Clint said, momentarily (and futilely) pressing the back of his hand against his nose. He looked at the half-open basement door. “No way in hell is this going to be pretty.”

It wasn’t. Eric Dunn had been butchered. There was no other word fit to describe it.

“It looks like he’s been dead for a few days at least,” Clint reported to Coulson while River cleared the rest of the basement. “Whoever these guys are, I’d say they tried to get their information out of Dunn first. And Phil? They didn’t fuck around. We’re dealing with pros, whoever they are. Sadistic ones.”

“All right,” Coulson said. “Sweep the house for anything useful. If they left anything—a laptop, a cell phone—pack it up. I’m going to put a call in to some of our contacts here in town and have them come over and secure the scene. We need to keep this locked down until the mission is over. Once they get there, head back to the safe house.”

“Any leads at the air field?” Clint asked.

“We found a partially destroyed cell phone. It’s possible it was the one they used to call Ramirez. Not much left of it, but Moretti’s going to see if she can get anything off of it. All digital surveillance from the last thirty-six hours has been transmitted to Moretti’s team in New York for them to start going through, and we’re bringing copies of the flight plans back to the safe house. I have a feeling we’re looking at a long night.” 

Given how long the day had been so far, Clint thought that was only fitting.


	2. Chapter 2

_Tuesday, July 22, 2008_  
 _2045 Hours_  
 _Dallas, Texas_

The SHIELD safe house in Dallas was located on a quiet street in a nice, middle-class neighborhood. Like most of the other houses on the block, it was an unassuming ranch. Unlike the others, it was outfitted with bullet-proof glass in all the windows, camouflaged security panels at every door, and a large tech closet hidden away behind a false wall in the dining room.

It also, Coulson thought with immense gratitude, had an aggressive air conditioning unit. The heat in Dallas in mid-July was no joke, even after the sun had gone down. As soon as he and Moretti had gotten back from the airfield, he’d gone to ditch the suit and stand under a lukewarm shower. By the time he reemerged, Moretti had covered the dining room table with computer equipment and was on her cell phone.

“No, Mike, I’m fine,” she was saying as Coulson wandered into the room. “Just give the kids extra kisses from me. I love you, too. I’ll call tomorrow.”

Moretti looked vaguely guilty as she hung up. “Sorry,” she said. “I had a spare minute and I wanted to check in.”

Coulson shook his head. “Nothing to be sorry about,” he said.

They were dealing with people who had abducted a six-year-old child from her own bedroom and tortured and mutilated a man in the basement of his own house. If Coulson had kids, he would have been calling to check on them, too.

As it was, it looked like the closest thing he had to progeny was home safe for the night. Coulson saw headlights turn into the safe house’s driveway, and Clint and River’s car pulled into the garage. A minute later, they let themselves in through the kitchen, carrying two pizza boxes apiece.

“We’re back. We picked up food,” Clint called, setting his boxes on the counter. 

“Anything new to report?” Coulson asked.

River went to the refrigerator. “We went over the house while we were waiting. We didn’t find a computer or a cell phone. If Dunn was communicating with these guys electronically, they didn’t want to leave any traces.” River’s mouth was set in a way that Coulson knew meant that she was extremely frustrated. “We didn’t find any leads at all, I’m afraid. The team you sent is going to do a more thorough search along with dealing with the remains.”

“How bad was it out there?” Moretti asked.

“Ever see one of those Texas Chainsaw movies?” Clint replied, catching the bottle of water River tossed to him.

Moretti held up her hands. “I withdraw the question.”

“What about the surveillance footage from the airfield?” River asked. “What have you found so far?”

“Well…nothing, not yet,” Moretti said with a frown. 

River slapped the refrigerator door closed and turned to glare at Moretti. “You know we don’t exactly have an overabundance of time on this, right?”

Moretti looked surprised, and actually edged away slightly. “The team in New York has just started analyzing it. It’s going to take a few hours, at least.”

Moretti’s team would be doing the real grunt work, going over all of the footage and marking good potential matches. Those would be bounced back down to Moretti for them to follow up on, cross-referencing them with the flight plans they’d confiscated. It was going to be a tedious process. That type of thing always was.

For a second, River looked like she was gearing up to argue, but then deflated slightly. “Right. You’re right. I’m sorry,” she said.

“In the meantime,” Coulson said, leaping into the awkward breech, “River, there’s something I need you to do.”

She immediately nodded. “Of course.”

Coulson waved them all back into the dining room, tapping a few keys on his laptop, bringing up the recording of the call from Ava’s kidnappers.

“In particular, I want you to listen to the second guy on the recording,” Coulson told River. “He only talks for a second, but I’m not convinced that Ramirez is right that the guy is English. Take a listen, see what you think?”

River was something of a savant when it came to languages, and the talent seemed to carry over to accents as well. She could mimic anything. She had been at SHIELD almost three years and still maintained a perfectly bland American accent whenever she was in public. (She’d come around to relaxing it in private; Coulson and Clint weren’t even fazed anymore when she suddenly sounded Scottish.) She was also incredibly good at identification.

The first man on the tape did most of the talking, giving demands and instructions to Daniel Ramirez. “I’d say Michigan for him,” River said. “Somewhere around the Great Lakes.”

Then Ava was put on the phone as proof-of-life. In between, the other man could be heard.

_“Ava, your daddy wants to talk to you. You be a good girl, now.”_

A jerky movement in his peripheral vision made Coulson turn his eyes away from the screen and to River. She had been leaning, resting her folded arms on the back of one of the chairs. Now she was standing ramrod straight.

“River? Is it...what is it?” he asked.

River’s mouth thinned out in a grim line and she shook herself slightly before turning to Coulson.

“The second man on the call.” she said. “I know who that is.”

*****

_April 23, 1998_  
Rio, Brazil

_She went by Mel Pond in those days, in that regeneration. It suited her. After sixty-six years, everything about her had become pared down. Her figure was wiry, her face angular, she kept her dark hair chopped short, and her eyes were cold and grey. The small handful of people she’d loved and cared about over the years had died or otherwise passed from her life and she’d seen no need to find others to fill the space they’d left. Love itself, along with fear and grief and mercy, felt as if it had been stripped away._

_Her purpose hadn’t changed. One day she would meet and kill the Doctor, though she found herself wishing that the creature would show himself already and be done with it. Mel still felt a vague loyalty to the Academy, small as its presence had grown on Earth in this era. It was mostly out of habit, and the fact that they were the one and only constant in her life._

_Still, since her last regeneration, she had distanced herself from them. She checked in at regular intervals, enough so that they wouldn’t trouble her, and went her own way the rest of the time. She found plenty to do to fill her time. Melody Pond had been well trained as a spy, a soldier, and an assassin. There were plenty of people who paid very well for such talent. The jobs provided her with an outlet and the money was tucked away in a number of hidden accounts. It might prove to be useful one day._

_It was a satisfactory enough life, even if occasionally the work environment was less than ideal. She especially disliked the rare times she was hired to do job that involved working with a partner._

_“You’re an unusual woman, Mel Pond,” Martin Clancy told her._

_Mel didn’t bother to look up from the handgun she was cleaning. That would have indicated that she cared about what her temporary roommate had to say, which she didn’t. She didn’t ignore him entirely, though. That would also have indicated that she cared about what he had to say._

_“How is that, Clancy?” she asked._

_She heard the man shift in the chair that he’d staked out in the shabby apartment._

_“Women tend to be sentimental. Especially where children are involved.”_

_Mel added “chauvinist” to her mental list of things she didn’t like about Martin Clancy, right below the fact that he was entirely too impressed with himself and right above the fact that the man’s Australian accent grated on her nerves._

_At least this partnership was only for the duration of one short job. Their employers wanted a target eliminated, one Mr. Rocha. That had been the reason for hiring Mel Pond. Unfortunately, Mr. Rocha had made the process rather inconvenient by going to ground and making himself unfindable. In spite of Mel’s insistence that she would find the man in time, her employers had gotten impatient and brought Clancy on to speed things along._

_Clancy had procured the bait that was sure to bring Mr. Rocha out of hiding. The ten-year-old boy, Rocha’s grandson, was trussed and tied and had been stowed in the apartment’s small bedroom. Periodically, Mel could hear a sniffle coming through the half-open door, but other than that, the boy had been quiet. She didn’t know what sort of methods Clancy used, but they were clearly effective._

_Mel started putting her gun back together. “I don’t have much use for sentiment.”_

_“Well, you are Scottish,” Clancy replied blandly._

_Mel didn’t deign to reply. Several minutes later, Clancy broke the silence again._

_“If we were to fight, who do you suppose would win?”_

_Dull annoyance made Mel snap the pieces of her gun together with more vigor than was strictly necessary._

_“It’s an interesting question, I think,” Clancy went on when she didn’t answer. “You’re younger than me. That could be to your advantage or disadvantage. I’m bigger than you. That could also be an advantage or disadvantage. We both like killing. I can’t decide who I think would win.”_

_Mel finished reassembling her gun and loaded a clip. “I would win,” she said._

_He didn’t seem fussed at her answer. “Why?”_

_“Because,” Mel gave him a smile that had had harder men begging for their lives, “you make your living preying on people who are weaker than you and scared of you. I’m neither. I’d kill you.”_

_He just blinked at her with that same little psychotic smile that seemed to be a permanent part of his face. Mel stood, tucking her gun under her jacket._

_“So,” she added, “I’ll leave you to tend to your babysitting duties while I do the heavy lifting, shall I?”_

_Mr. Rocha arrived at the apartment building an hour later, and Mel, who had hidden herself in a dark corner alcove, left him dead on the tile floor with two bullets in his skull. She walked calmly out the back door of the building, dialing her employers on her mobile to let them know the job was done._

_She never bothered to find out what became of the boy, if Clancy had been ordered to kill him or release him once Rocha was dead. That wasn’t her part of the job._

_And Mel Pond didn’t really care about anything beyond the job._

*****

_Tuesday, July 22, 2008_  
 _2100 Hours_  
 _Dallas, Texas_

“His name is Martin Clancy,” River said. “We moved in some of the same circles before I came to work for SHIELD. He’s Australian, not English. Whatever organization these other guys work for, he’s not a part of it. He’s strictly freelance. They’ll have brought him in as a specialist.”

“What kind of specialist?” Moretti asked.

“Kidnapper,” River replied. “Clancy specializes in kidnapping children, for ransom, for leverage, you name it.”

Moretti looked a little sick. Coulson didn’t blame her, but they didn’t have time to get emotional.

“You say you moved in the same circles. Can you ID him?” Coulson asked.

River nodded without hesitation. “Yes.”

“Can he ID you?”

If Clancy knew what River Song looked like, that was definitely going to affect how they’d be able to approach the situation once they found him.

“No,” River said. 

Coulson studied her closely for a moment. With stakes like this, he wanted to be able to take River’s word at face value and trust that she would tell them if it was possible she could compromise the mission. But if River knew the man well enough to recognize a recording of his voice, how could Clancy not know her on sight?

River seemed to read the doubt on his face. “I swear, Coulson. I’d tell you if I thought there was even a chance. He’s doesn’t know my face. Not only that,” she continued, “but I’m willing to bet that he’s already in SHIELD’s databases. He’s been involved in some high-profile jobs. Check the records for a kidnapping in Athens, Greece in 1992. The family’s name was Galanos. The father worked in the Prime Minister’s office. Alberda in Cape Town in 1995. Rocha in Rio in 1998.”

Moretti was already fishing out her cell phone. “I’ll call it in right now,” she said, stepping off into the kitchen to contact her team.

“All right, River, what else can you tell us about this guy?” Coulson asked.

River sighed, folding her arms. “He’s a sociopath,” she said. “Which is both good and bad for us.”

“How is that possibly good?” Clint asked.

“Clancy is a very black-and-white sort of person,” River said. “Very letter-of-the-law, or at least of the agreement that’s been struck. They’ve given Daniel Ramirez until Friday. Clancy will take that seriously. He’s not going to hurt her in the meantime, and he won’t allow anyone else to hurt her, either.

“But once the deadline has passed, it’s over. If they say she’s dead on Friday at noon, then she’s dead on Friday at noon. Clancy isn’t going to get sentimental. He won’t get attached.” River glanced at Clint. “He’s not going to have an unexpected attack of mercy. He’ll kill her without thinking twice.”

Coulson raised his eyebrows. “I know you said you moved in the same circles. How closely, exactly, did you move?”

This time, River didn’t meet his eyes. “We had some employers in common,” she said. “And he’s a man who’s known by reputation.” She straightened up, looking at Coulson. Something in her eyes was closed off. That concerned him. Coulson had gotten to know that look well during River’s first year with SHIELD, but had been seeing it less and less. 

He didn’t quite know what to think of the fact that it was back.

Coulson’s train of thought was interrupted by Moretti coming back from the kitchen, still on her cell phone. “Okay, I’m going to pull it up now,” she was saying. “Just let me get to my laptop.” Moretti bent over one of the computers, phone wedged between her ear and her shoulder, tapping a few keys. “Okay. Got it,” she said. “Agent Song? Is this him?”

They all came around to look at the screen. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. That’s him,” River said.

The picture on the screen was marked as having been taken in Cape Town. The man, Martin Clancy, was no one particularly remarkable looking, but distinctive enough that he’d be easy to recognize. In the picture he was probably in his early forties. He had started to go a little thick around the middle and his hairline had receded a bit. His hair was curly, springing back from the high forehead, and his nose was flat like it had been smashed in at some point.

“Agent Song has confirmed the identification,” Moretti said into her cell. “Use the picture as a base and start running facial recognition on all the footage from the airfield.”

Clint looked at Coulson and River. “So, I guess now we just have to wait?”

Wait and hope they got a lead in time. That was always the hardest part of any mission.

*****

_Wednesday, July 23, 2008_  
 _0409 Hours_

Clint snapped awake at the touch of a hand on his ankle. River was standing over him.

“They’ve found Clancy,” she said.

Clint rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and levered himself up off the sofa where he’d crashed several hours ago. He joined River, Coulson, and Moretti at the dining room table where the computers were set up.

The security cams had gotten a good shot of Clancy and his partner. The New York team was already working on matching his image against anything in SHIELD’s database of known threats. The two men had been carrying a large, cooler-type chest between then.

“Do you think that’s…?” Moretti asked.

“Yeah. Ava,” River replied. “That would track with what I know about Clancy.”

Using the security footage, they’d been able to match Clancy to a private plane that had filed flight plans listing its destination as Wilmington, North Carolina. It had taken hours, but SHIELD had managed to wrangle footage from the Wilmington airport and picked up Clancy and his partner on the security footage there. There was no evidence that they had flown out of the city again. That indicated that they were probably somewhere within reasonable driving distance.

It was the best lead they had. While the New York team kept working on getting additional information, the four agents in Dallas had started prepping to head east.

“Agent Sitwell is confident that they can have the field considerably narrowed by the time we put down in North Carolina,” Coulson said when he got off the phone with headquarters.

Of course, there had to be a catch. Wilimington and its surrounding areas were under a hurricane warning.

“Hurricane Dorothy.” Moretti had the muted weather report pulled up on the safe house’s television. “It’s due to hit the North Carolina coast in a little over thirty-six hours, on Thursday night. The good news is that it’s only a Category 1. There aren’t any evacuation orders issued for the area. Hopefully that means these guys will be staying put.”

“Jesus.” Coulson scratched the back of his head as the station showed the huge swirling cloud formation closing in on the coast. “This is all we need.”

“So, can we just speed up our timetable?” River said. “Get in ahead of it and pull Ava out?”

Coulson shook his head. “We don’t even have an exact location narrowed down yet. We have no idea what sort of place they might be holed up in or if there are civilians nearby. We don’t know how many of them there are or what kind of defenses they’ll have. More than likely, by the time we have that information, we won’t have time to put together a plan to get in ahead of the storm. And we can’t half-ass this with a civilian hostage.”

“You can wait until after it’s blown past,” Moretti offered. “Friday. That’ll give you plenty of time to work out a plan.”

River folded her arms. “No,” she said firmly. “No, that puts us way too close to the deadline. They’ll be on edge by then, and God knows what the hurricane will do to the area.”

“So, we use it,” Clint said. He straightened up as the others turned to look at him. “We can be reasonably sure they’re somewhere in the area, right? So, once SHIELD tracks them down, we scout it out, fine tune a strategy, and wait for the storm to hit on Thursday night. They’ll never expect it. There sure as hell won’t be any random civilians to worry about. Everyone will be inside riding out the storm. We use Dorothy as cover. The hurricane is our way in.”

*****

_Wednesday, July 23, 2008_  
 _1317 Hours_

In retrospect, Clint thought, maybe he should have kept his mouth shut. With that one statement, he had somehow wound up in charge.

When he’d first suggested going in under cover of the hurricane, the others had stared at him for a long moment. Clint had been about to shrug and say, Or not, when Coulson had said, “No. No, that’s good. You’re right. It’s the last thing they’ll see coming. Start drawing up what you think you’ll need and call it in to Sitwell.”

And, just like that, Clint found himself planning the op.

He and River and Coulson had put the equipment requisition list together, with the acknowledgement that some things were just going to have to be rigged on the fly. By the time they were on the jet en route to North Carolina, the gravity of what he was doing had started to sink in for Clint. 

What the hell was he doing? What was _Coulson_ doing? Clint didn’t run ops. He wasn’t a strategy guy, though Coulson had told him more than once that he had an innate talent for it. Sure, Clint could adapt a plan on the fly; he did it all the time. Circumstances could change unexpectedly on ops, and a good agent had to be able to roll with it. But that was different. He could see the big picture, but he didn’t call the shots. At the end of the day, he was a sniper. Generally speaking, if he screwed up, someone _didn’t_ die.

If he miscalculated and fucked this up, they could lose their lead on a potentially very dangerous terrorist cell (or at least an overly ambitious group of criminals), a little kid could die, and he could get his partner, his handler, or a member of the strike team that would be backing them up killed.

No pressure.

Clint knew he should be resting while they were in the air, short as the flight was. They were going to have to hit the ground running as soon as they landed in Wilmington. Coulson’s eyes were closed, though whether he was asleep or just resting, Clint wasn’t certain. Moretti had crashed as soon as they’d taken off from Dallas, but then, she’d been up all night the night before while the rest of them had gotten what shut-eye they’d could.

Actually, Clint thought, glancing over at River, he wasn’t sure if his partner had gotten any sleep at all. She’d been sitting up with Moretti when he’d gone to sleep and she’d woken him up when they’d gotten the hit on Clancy.

Nor was she taking advantage of the downtime on the flight. Instead, River was pretending to read a book, something that she only did when something was bothering her and she didn’t want people to bug her about it. Clint frowned. In almost three years, he’d never seen River tweak over a case the way she was over this one. She’d spaced out in front of the Ramirezes. She’d bitten Moretti’s head off. Clint couldn’t say it surprised him. A mission involving a little girl who had been stolen from her parents had to hit close to home.

Not that he knew _exactly_ that that was what had happened to River, but it was the only thing he’d ever come up with that made even an iota of sense. River had never gone out of her way to fill in any of the giant, gaping holes in her background. She acted like she would rather pretend that her life started with being brought into SHIELD. Clint had decided that he wasn’t going to push her. He wanted to know more about where River had come from, but he wanted it to be because she chose to tell him.

As far as hard facts, he knew very little about her. He knew her name and her birth date. She’d been born in Demon’s Run, wherever the hell that was. Her biological parents were Amelia and Rory, a pretty Scottish redhead and an English nurse. She’d been raised by “foster parents” named Robert and Elizabeth MacDonald somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, near the ocean. They had died “a long time ago” according to River, apparently leaving her on her own.

River had asserted more than once that her foster parents had been good people who had never hurt her, but Clint still had reservations on that point. Good people didn’t raise a kid to be able to do the things River Song had been able to do at a tender age, and Robert and Elizabeth MacDonald were the most logical ones to have taught her. It certainly hadn’t been Kirkwood School, where she had landed at the age of thirteen. Coulson had vetted that place inside and out and it sure as hell wasn’t an assassin factory.

Then she’d left school and gone into business as a contract operative. At the age of fourteen. Because _that_ made sense.

So much for the facts of her file. Clint had also picked up random bits and pieces from things she’d said off-hand or just by observing. He knew that she hadn’t tried a banana until she’d been in her late teens and had found it disgusting once she finally had. He knew that she loved to be in the water and that she’d learned to swim in the Atlantic Ocean. He knew that her favorite author was some guy named Daniel Poam who wrote pulp sci-fi novels. Clint had read some of them; they were entertaining. He knew that she always hummed the same tune when she was happy, but he had no idea what the song was. None of it was really earth shattering, but Clint hoarded all those little things away.

They had been sleeping together for seven months, long enough to have smoothed out the kinks in that arena and to figure out which ones they had in common. Clint knew exactly where she was ticklish, that she looked upon unlikely locations as fun logistical challenges, and that, like him, she wanted to be touching when they slept. On the other hand, he had already known for a while that it was safer to stay out of swinging distance when she had a nightmare until he was damn sure she was awake. He knew every mark on her body, from the tiny notch in her left ear, to the line of freckles on her neck, to the marks on her calf where she’d caught a through-and-through bullet, to the long thin line that curved around her right side under her ribs. 

He didn’t know why she had grown up with foster parents instead of her biological ones. He didn’t know how she knew about her biological parents at all. He didn’t know what her home town had been. Clint had more or less accepted the fact that he would probably always not know more about River than he would know. He’d convinced himself that he was okay with that.

That conviction tended to falter at times like this when something was clearly going on with her and Clint had no idea what to do about it.


	3. Chapter 3

_Wednesday, July 23, 2008_  
 _1432 Hours_  
 _Wilmington, North Carolina_

When they landed in Wilmington, another SHIELD jet was already there. Agent Jasper Sitwell stood waiting to meet them as they deplaned. 

“Harper Creek,” he said by way of greeting.

“Please tell me that’s a location,” Coulson replied.

“It’s a location,” Sitwell confirmed with a nod. 

“You were able to trace them to a town?” Clint asked.

“We were able to trace them to a specific property.” Sitwell nodded at Moretti. “That new kid, Larson, is a wizard.”

“Top of his class,” Moretti said, handing her bags off to one of the crew members from the second jet. She’d be riding back to New York with Sitwell.

Sitwell led them to a worktable just inside the door of a private hanger. There were maps there, being held flat by a random series of tools. Harper Creek occupied a point about fifty miles south of Wilmington, roughly fifteen miles from the coast.

“It’s an unincorporated area, very rural,” Sitwell said. He pulled around another map that marked out property lines. “The property we tracked them to is an old horse farm that went out of business about four years ago. It’s in the middle of nowhere. Hard to sneak up on.”

“Who owns the property?” Coulson asked. “Do we have any leads at all on who, exactly, we’re dealing with?”

“On paper, it went into foreclosure four years ago and was bought up by a company called Pathways United, which supposedly sets up small summer camps for disadvantaged kids. Only they never seem to get their business going. The analysts are still digging into it, but some names have started to come up that are rumored to have possible HYDRA connections.”

River looked skeptical. “Is that for certain?” she asked. “It seems like whenever there’s a shady organization that rears its head, someone at SHIELD thinks that it’s HYDRA back from the grave.”

Coulson couldn’t disagree with that. HYDRA had caused a lot of havoc during the Second World War, and had had plans to cause more. They were supposed to be extinct, but, like the Nazis, there was any number of malcontents with violent tendencies that had tried to resurrect some form of it over the years. Most never made it past infancy without imploding, but the possibility of a true HYDRA resurgence was something that SHIELD was always on guard for.

“Well, no, nothing is for certain yet,” Sitwell said. “Which is why capturing these men is the highest priority.”

“And getting Ava Ramirez back safely,” River said.

Sitwell gave her a wary look. “Well. Yeah, we want that too,” he said. The agent cleared his throat and, apparently trying to find a safer topic, turned his attention to Clint. “So, I hear you’re taking the lead on this one,” Sitwell said to him. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Clint replied, looking vaguely like he wanted to throw up.

“Do we have a place down there to set up shop?” Coulson asked.

Sitwell nodded, bending over the map again.

“The farm property is here.” Sitwell tapped the area outlined in red. “We’ve found a safe house for you guys here.” He pointed to a smaller property that abutted the farm.

“How did you manage to find a safe house right next door?” River asked.

SHIELD was adept at establishing safe houses in urban areas, both longstanding ones and fly-by-nights that were set up on short notice. Rural areas, though, could be a nightmare. There were fewer options, finding something in the right location was a hassle, and the locals tended to be a bit more inclined to notice new people in the area.

“We pulled the property records for the real estate holdings adjacent to the farm and just started investigating the owners,” Sitwell said. “This place belongs to a Jack and Carol Hertzel of Chicago. It’s strictly a vacation place. We’ve confirmed that they are currently in Illinois, have no plans to travel anywhere this week, and a check with the US Post Office confirms that no one else is receiving mail at that address. It’s vacant. We’ll compensate them for their trouble and any damages later.”

The others looked at each other and shrugged. Compared to other grey areas they’d wandered into, using someone’s house without their permission barely even registered on the amorality radar. 

“It looks good,” Coulson said. “Fairly isolated, no close neighbors. We’ll need to have something to tell any locals we run across, though. In case they ask what we’re doing in the area, especially with a hurricane about to hit.”

A small detail, and odds were that they wouldn’t even need to use it, but it always paid to have your story straight.

“That’s easy,” Clint said. “We’re friends of Jack and Carol’s, who said we could use the place. And we’re dumb midwesterners who have never seen a hurricane before and think it would be fun to be right in the middle of one, and it can’t possibly be worse than a tornado.” When the others looked at him, Clint shrugged. “Hey, never underestimate human stupidity or what it will allow you to get away with.”

“Works for me,” Coulson said.

“Your rental car is waiting,” Sitwell added. “All of your equipment is already loaded up and the safe house address is programmed into the GPS. Beta Team will be coming out tomorrow and they’ll be bringing more gear, including a generator. Send a requisition of anything you find you need and they’ll bring it along.”

“Who’s heading up Beta Team?” Clint asked.

“Agent Hill,” Sitwell said. “And we’ll be monitoring the situation from headquarters.”

Moretti half smiled at the three of them. “You guys be careful. And good luck.”

As they walked to the vehicle that was waiting for them outside the hanger, Coulson heard Clint mutter, “Yeah. Going to need all of that I can get.”

 

*****

 

_Wednesday, July 23, 2008_  
 _2012 Hours_  
 _Harper Creek, North Carolina_

Coulson kind of had to appreciate the Hertzels. Their vacation cabin was no McMansion that had been dropped in the middle of the woods. It was a plain, solid, two-story house furnished with cast-offs and seemed to have been set up with extended-family occupancy in mind. There were three small bedrooms downstairs. They’d each appropriated one; with another team arriving tomorrow it wouldn’t be smart for Clint and River to appear to be bunking down together. The second floor had been divided into two additional dormitory-style rooms, which looked like they were meant for a small hoard of grandkids. At least they’d have plenty of room when Hill’s team arrived on site.

Coulson had set up the comm equipment and computer on the kitchen table and was watching Clint pack his gear for tonight’s recon mission. He had already squared away his knife and sidearm, and was now stocking his quiver with arrowheads.

It had been Clint’s skill with a rifle that had gotten him onto SHIELD’s radar. When Pvt. Barton’s file had first come across Coulson’s desk, he had been sure that the kid’s marksmanship scores were some sort of computer error. A couple of quick phone calls had confirmed that no, they were accurate. Also accurate had been the fact that he was sitting in a military prison awaiting court martial. Still, the scores had been impressive enough that Fury had given Coulson approval to go down to Georgia, take a look at the kid, and see if he was worth recruiting.

Coulson could remember sitting in the dingy interview room across the table from a nineteen-year-old boy who was scared half out of his wits and desperate to cover it up with sheer bravado.

“I hear you’re pretty good with a rifle,” Coulson had said.

He had seen something shift in Pvt. Barton’s expression with those words. The bravado had faded for a moment and something like actual confidence had shone through as the kid had replied, “You should see me with a bow.”

That was the moment, Coulson realized later, that he’d first seen the real Clint Barton.

Coulson hadn’t had to do much digging to find Clint’s credentials in that department. Hell, the kid had been a headlining act, at a rinky-dink carnival, but still. He’d been billed at _The World’s Greatest Marksman_ , and there was a fair amount of truth in that particular bit of advertising. Clint had proven his skill with both rifle and bow within his first week at SHIELD. R&D had latched onto the novelty of a bow and arrows with enthusiasm. Over the years, they had developed and perfected collapsible bows, automated quivers, and arrowheads equipped with explosives, tracking devices, sonic devices, grappling hooks, you name it.

Coulson was a little iffy on the sonic arrows, with good reason. After a mission had taken a dive south a few years back, he was the one who had found Clint disoriented, bleeding from the ears, and unable to hear a damned thing after setting one off in close quarters. Coulson had also been on the front lines for the frustrating months of recovery that had followed. Still, that damned sonic arrow had saved Clint’s life, so he couldn’t argue much about keeping them in the arsenal.

In a roundabout way, that incident was the reason Coulson was pushing Clint to take the lead on this mission, beyond the fact that he honestly felt Clint’s strategy was a solid one. The simple fact of the matter was that field agents, even the best ones, had a shelf-life. The job had too many physical demands and doled out too many physical knocks to allow an agent to work exclusively in the field forever. Coulson had gone through it himself. He was coming up on his forty-third birthday and while he was in much better shape than most men his age, he knew that he wasn’t as fast as he used to be and he had aches and pains in places that he hadn’t ten years ago. 

Coulson had segued pretty naturally into running ops and agents, and supporting Fury in an administrative capacity. He was still active in the field, but it wasn’t where he lived anymore. Clint had an incredibly intelligent head on his shoulders and would be a valuable strategist for SHIELD when it was time for him to step back from field work. Coulson had always known that the challenge would be getting Clint to believe that.

He’d thought that they’d reached that point prematurely when Clint had blown out his ears. A deaf agent couldn’t work in the field, not without being an easy target. He could tell that Clint had expected to be cut loose, though Coulson and even Fury had told him repeatedly that that was not going to happen, that Clint still had plenty to contribute to SHIELD. For a while, every time Coulson had tried to “talk” to him about it, Clint had responded by slapping the notebook face down so that he couldn’t read it. It had been a dark handful of months, most of which Coulson had spent vacillating between wringing his hands and wanting to scream in frustration. 

Coulson knew that Clint would never have stayed at SHIELD in a position that he saw as being offered out of pity. Fortunately, the situation had never come to a head. R&D had jumped on the problem and though it had taken them a few months, they had developed hearing aids that brought his hearing back up to an above-average level and could be worn under virtually any field condition. Hawkeye had been able to resume his place on SHIELD’s list of active field operatives.

Clint had come back from one debilitating injury, but there was never anything to say that there wouldn’t be another coming down the pike. Even if there wasn’t, age and plain old wear and tear would do the trick eventually. At some point, Clint would have to adapt to a new role in SHIELD. As far as Coulson was concerned, now was the time to start prepping for it. Clint might be anxious about Coulson putting him in the lead on this assignment, but it was for his own good and Coulson knew he could handle it.

God, having kids was rough.

Coulson shook his head and finished hooking up the comm equipment. “When are you two going to head out?” he asked.

Clint glanced up at the bear-shaped clock over the mantel. It was eight-thirty. “I thought we’d go a little after midnight. It won’t take us long to get there cutting through the woods.”

They’d studied the maps of the area over dinner. The Hertzels’ property abutted the Pathways farm, and the house where the terrorists were holed up was only a little over a mile going cross country. 

Coulson nodded. “I’m going to go get a couple of hours sleep, then. You?”

He saw Clint’s eyes flicker over to the cracked-open door to one of the bedrooms where River had disappeared about half an hour ago. “Yeah. Probably should,” he said. He forced an unconcerned smile at Coulson. “I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

*****

River lay in the dark, running her thumb over and over Mrs. Ramirez’s little beaded necklace. She’d stretched out on top of the worn flowered comforter. It was far too hot for blankets, and even if it weren’t, it would have felt wrong somehow to get that comfortable.

She should be sleeping. She hadn’t gotten any rest at all last night, and it was courting disaster to go into a mission fatigued. River knew her limits, though, and knew that she was still a day or two from the danger point. She’d always been able to get by on less sleep than a normal person, just like she’d always been able to run a little faster, or climb a bit more agilely, or hold her breath under water a little longer than she ought to be able to. Just like she always knew the time and location without ever having to look at a clock or a map.

Time Lord DNA did funny things to a human body.

She’d left the door of the bedroom cracked open, letting in a wedge of light from the main room, and she could hear Clint and Coulson talking quietly. River sighed. She wished that she could tell the two of them the truth of things. The whole truth. Clint, especially. In spite of her once firm determination not to get close to anyone at SHIELD, she and her partner were now on extremely intimate terms. It wasn’t just about sex, either. He was her friend, something that she’d given up on having a very long time ago. He was someone that she trusted with her life, if not with her past.

And she knew a great deal of his by now. He’d told her what he could remember about his parents and about some of the highs and lows of his years in foster care. She knew the precise (fairly hilarious) circumstances under which he and his brother had run away with Carson’s Carnival. She knew about Madame Paloma, the thirty-something fortune teller who had done a bit more than read his tea leaves when he’d been sixteen. She knew just how badly things had gone with Barney and why Clint had chosen to walk away from Carson’s.

River knew that it frustrated Clint sometimes that he knew so little about her, for all that he tried hard not to show it.

She wanted to tell them, about the Doctor, the regenerations, the time travel, all of it. More to the point, she wanted them to simply _know_ and then they could all just move on. River just wasn’t naïve enough to think it could ever be that easy.

She’d given some thought to how it would likely go if she did tell them. Best case scenario, they’d laugh it off as a joke. More likely they’d march her down to Psych for a full evaluation, assuming that some universal joint in her head had broken down.

River could prove it, if she had to. It wouldn’t even be that hard. The evidence was written all over her DNA. SHIELD didn’t run a full genetic work-up on its agents (because even SHIELD wasn’t that paranoid) but that didn’t mean that it didn’t have the capability. Any doctor or scientist with a basic understanding of the human genome would be able to look at her genetics and point out the parts that shouldn’t be there.

The parts that marked Agent River Song as not entirely human.

That would lead to the worst case scenario: being locked up in a SHIELD lab and vivisected.

No. The truth was best kept buried deep down and forgotten about as much as possible for as long as possible. And when the Doctor turned up? Well, he might well make that impossible, but she’d jump off that bridge when she came to it.

The light coming through the cracked door dimmed a bit as a lamp was turned out. River quickly tucked the necklace back under the collar of her shirt and rolled over onto her side, back to the door. She wasn’t sure if Clint would be coming to join her. They didn’t spend every night together and for appearance’s sake, he’d stowed his gear in one of the other rooms on the first floor. Still, he knew that she was preoccupied and she knew he was worried about planning the op. Given that they both tended to sleep better when the other was nearby, she rather expected that he would.

Sure enough, after a minute the door creaked open. She heard Clint pull his boots off before stretching out beside her.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked after a moment.

River sighed and rolled over to face him. “Not really,” she said. “Keyed up, I suppose.”

She saw him smile in the dim light and let him work one arm underneath her to pull her over. “You’ve been hanging around with me too long,” he said.

River snorted, amused. Clint’s tendency to bounce off the walls before a mission was old hat to her at this point. As soon as the clock started, he’d be calm and focused, but the buildup made him edgy. River tended to be the opposite. Her adrenaline usually kicked in after the fact.

“Maybe,” she conceded. 

“Do you want to tell me why this case is bugging you?” he asked. “And before you say it’s not, you’ve been acting off since Fury called us in to brief us.”

This was the danger of being involved with a trained observer. River propped herself up on her elbow and looked down at Clint. “I need to ask you to do something,” she said.

Even in the dark she could see the hint of wariness in his eyes, but he just said, “Sure.”

River smoothed out a nonexistent wrinkle in his shirt for a moment, gathering her thoughts before replying.

“I know there’s a bigger picture we need to focus on here,” she said. “Terrorists, security breaches, wars, what have you. But promise me you won’t forget that there’s a kid caught up in all of this, and she doesn’t understand what’s going on and she didn’t ask for this to happen. All right?”

If anything he looked more troubled than before. “I haven’t forgotten that for a second,” he said.

River nodded and laid back down with her head against his shoulder. She heard Clint make two abortive stabs at saying something, then finally just sigh as he wrapped his arm around her. River reached up and lightly rubbed the back of his neck until, pre-mission nerves notwithstanding, his breathing evened out into sleep.

Sleep never did find River, but that was all right. Lying in the dark with Clint was the closest to peace she was likely to get for now. That was enough for her.

*****

_Thursday, July 24, 2008_  
 _0048 Hours_

The night was clear and calm, the exact opposite, Clint thought, of what it would be tomorrow night when Hurricane Dorothy would be right over their heads.

It was a perfect night to do recon.

Clint and River hiked the three-quarters of a mile through the woods, crossed the creek that formed the property boundary, and paused within the tree line to check out the lay of the land. They were at the edge of an old pasture to the east of the Pathways farmhouse. The farmhouse itself was out of sight, over a low, grassy rise. There was a long, low structure in the pasture, standing out palely against the sloping land. The property records Sitwell had pulled for them said it was a barn. 

“We’ll clear it before we move on to the house,” River told Coulson over the comm as she and Clint shoved aside some of the rotted planks of wood fence and stepped into the knee-high grass.

The cinderblock structure obviously wasn’t being used by the kidnappers and had the look of long abandonment. It was grown over with kudzu vines and Clint and River could hear the scurrying of small feet as they entered. But it was sturdy and reasonably large and still smelled vaguely of horses. There were five stalls down one side and fortunately their outer doors were all still intact. They’d be able to close out the elements.

“I think we’ve found our staging place,” Clint said. “We can gather up here and move in around the house when the hurricane’s eye is over us.”

 _“You’re sure it’s structurally sound?”_ Coulson asked over the comm.

“Seems to be,” Clint said. “It’s far enough from the creek that it shouldn’t flood, and they won’t be able to see us getting to it.”

And it would give them a handy place to fall back once they got Ava out of the house. By then, the hurricane would be right overhead, and walking or driving all the way back to their safe house would be far too risky.

Clint and River made their way back into the trees and circled around until they reached the house. Sitwell had managed to get some satellite photos of it. Even in daylight it wasn’t much to look at; it had started out as an unremarkable long one-story structure, and a more recent addition on the south side had transformed it into a large L. It sat in a yard that was bare save for some scattered bushes, an old clothesline, and what seemed to be piles of old appliances and building materials. 

“Not what you might call a lot of cover,” Clint muttered. He felt River, who was crouched down beside him, nod.

Even at this time of night, there was a light on in the kitchen. Someone was on guard duty. Clint stayed in the shadows of the trees at the back of the house while River circled around to watch the front. They only had one night to get an idea of the what they’d be going up against. The needed to find out as much as they could about the house’s defenses and how many men they would need to neutralize. There were at least three: Clancy, his partner in Dallas, and the man who picked them up in Wilmington. There was nothing to say there weren’t more.

 _“I don’t see a generator anywhere,”_ River said quietly over the comm. _“What do you think the odds are that they’ll lose power tomorrow night?”_

“If they don’t, we’ll help it along,” Clint replied. 

_“I wonder where they’re keeping Ava,”_ River said a few minutes later. _“The floor plans say that the house doesn’t have a basement, and they clearly aren’t bothering to secure the outbuildings. She has to be in there somewhere.”_

“We’ll probably be able to get a better idea once the bugs are in place,” Clint said. “What are you thinking as point of entry?”

_“The bathroom in the addition. Unless we hear a lot of traffic going in and out of there.”_

“Yeah.” Clint pulled out his bow and snapped it open. “Okay, I’m getting ready to launch the bug. Keep an eye on the front.”

The arrowheads equipped with listening devices were oddly shaped and weighted, a pointed cylinder with a bulky end where the bug was housed. Clint had spent enough time practicing with the mock-ups that it didn’t affect his accuracy, though. He switched the device on, took careful aim, and fired the arrow toward the house.

It hit in the center of the roof of the main house, far enough from the edges that a casually observing eye from the yard wouldn’t see it. A second arrow landed in the center of the roof of the addition. Given the tested range of the listening devices, they’d have most of the house covered.

“Aerie? We should be live.”

 _“Copy, Hawkeye. I have a good feed and I’m patching in the New York team now.”_ Moretti and her people would be helping monitor activity in the house so that Alpha Team wouldn’t have to tie one person to the computer until tomorrow night. _“Sounds pretty quiet in there at the moment.”_

“Good.” That meant that no one inside had heard arrows hitting the roof.

Clint and River watched the house from their separate posts for a while. There wasn’t a whole lot of action to see. At one point one of the men stepped out onto the back porch to smoke a cigarette; Clint could see the small orange spark and the faint curls of smoke from where he was crouched in the trees. About half an hour later, a dog wandered into the yard, tripping a set of floodlights. Two men immediately appeared, one from each entrance, both carrying guns. They shook their heads in disgust, chased the dog off, and went back inside.

 _“Well, so they’re not entirely complacent,”_ River murmured over the comm. Clint nodded silently. The men in the house were keeping watch. On the other hand, the place was hardly a secure fortress. The terrorists probably never thought they’d be traced this far. That would be to their advantage.

It looked like the dog was going to be the high point of excitement for the night. Clint snuck a look at his watch. “Okay, it’s almost 0330 hours. Let’s head back to base.”

He was gathering himself up to pull further back into the trees when River’s voice in his ear made him freeze.

 _“I’ll be there in a minute. I want to get a closer look,”_ she said.

“ _Negative,_ Talon,” Clint said. “Pull out and meet me around back.”

_“Fifteen minutes. I’ve got this covered.”_

“Talon--” But Clint heard the faint, tell-tale click that said she’d turned off her comm. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

 _“Did she just drop off?”_ Coulson asked.

“Yes,” Clint said, starting to pick his way through the trees around toward the front of the house.

Clint was fairly sure he heard Coulson mutter, _“Welcome to my world,”_ but chose not to acknowledge it.

Keeping low, staying well within the trees, Clint made his way around to the point where River had been positioned to watch the house.

But she was already gone.

*****

It was the dog that had given her the idea.

When River had first heard rusting in the underbrush, she’d immediate brought her gun up to bear and she didn’t relax even when she’d seen that the source was not one of the kidnappers. Stray dogs could have uncertain tempers, and even a friendly dog could bark, catching the attention of the men inside. Her gun had a silencer. River didn’t fancy having to kill a dog, but she also didn’t fancy the notion of her or Clint being given away.

But the hound approached her silently and with a wagging tail and lolling tongue, looking up at River hopefully. The dog looked decently fed and wore a collar with a set of clinking tags. Not a true stray, then. Probably someone’s farm dog that was allowed to roam the countryside, making its nightly rounds for promising scraps.

 _Sorry girl,_ River thought, hand automatically going out to pat the dog’s head. _No food here._ Even if she’d had some on her, she didn’t want the animal attached to her for the rest of the night.

The dog took the absence of food with good grace and, after a minute or two, got up and trotted off toward the house.

River watched the dog, noting the point it had to pass before the floodlights switched on. She watched the men come out into the yard, shake their heads, chase the dog off and go back inside again. And she started calculating.

Clint wouldn’t like it, but even if she could just get a glimpse or two of what the situation was inside the house, that would help them tomorrow night. It would allow them to prepare better. And, River acknowledged to herself, if she could possibly get eyes on Ava, she wanted to.

Moving first in a crouch and then in an army crawl, River made her way across the open space around the house. She stopped several feet short of where she had seen the dog trip the lights and carefully edged over to her left where a scraggly line of azaleas began. It would do for cover. River eased herself up on her knees and pulled out one of the rocks she’d packed into the pockets of her jacket. She hefted the rock in one hand, calculated how much force she’d need, then threw the rock so that it passed right under one of the floodlights, tripping the sensor and then landing harmlessly out of sight in the overgrown side yard. 

River had already dived behind the bushes when the front door burst open.

*****

Clint froze among the trees when the floodlights came on.

 _God damn it to hell, River,_ he thought. 

As before, one man came out the back and one out the front, guns drawn. They circled the house, but apparently didn’t find anything. They met up in the side yard, and seemed to be comparing baffled notes. They went back inside and the lights went off.

A few minutes later, they had to repeat the procedure when the lights cut on again.

In spite of his annoyance with River, Clint grinned. He could see what she was up to, now.

The fourth time the floodlights cut on and the men came out, Clint could hear one of them shout something about _fucking nature_ as he stomped around to the side of the front porch. He jerked a thick black cable out of an outdoor electrical socket and the yard was plunged into darkness. 

His grin faded as his eyes picked out a small shadow move out from behind a line of neglected shrubbery and move in on the house. Even if he was closer, there was no way Clint could stop River. There would be too much risk that it would give them both away and then the whole damn mission would be blown.

As Clint watched River disappear into the shadows against the outer wall of the house, he just prayed that they wouldn’t wind up blown anyway.

*****

There were some fairly pissed-off men in the living room.

River could hear them easily, even before she eased herself up enough to peek through the window. She could see three men, and not a one of them looked all that happy about chasing phantom dogs or raccoons or deer in the middle of the night. 

“—couldn’t even outfit this fucking place with decent security—“

“—sick of being stuck out here babysitting—“

“—how much longer do they expect us to—“

They broke off as a fourth man appeared in the room. River pulled back from the window slightly, ready to dodge out of sight if she needed to. Martin Clancy turned a cold eye on the other men.

“You woke her up,” he said conversationally.

He stood staring at them pointedly for another moment or two, then turned and went back down the hall.

One of the other men shuddered. “That motherfucker gives me the creeps.”

 _Good to know you have some sense,_ River thought. She quickly made a mental note of all the weaponry she could see in the living room and where it was positioned before she sank below the windowsill and started to work her way around the side of the house.

Clancy had gone down the hall of the addition. River silently made her way around the side of the house, cautiously peeking in windows as she went, counting them off and noting what the rooms were. Bedroom. Bedroom. Storage room. 

Ava’s room.

The window was curtained, but enough of a crack remained that River could see in. There was dim light from some source off in a corner—a nightlight maybe. The room was illuminated enough for River to see a mattress on the floor with a small figure curled up on it.

As she watched, Ava sat up on her mattress. River was relieved to see that while the child looked scared and like she’d suffered a few days of neglect, she didn’t appear to be hurt. She drew back a little just to make sure that she wouldn’t be seen, and as she did so, she saw Ava’s eyes go wide and the girl practically dove back into a prone position, pulling a blanket over her head.

For a second, River feared she had been spotted, but then the door of the room opened and Clancy came in. River watched him cast an impassive look down at his charge, then disappear off into the corner. The light grew shadowed. Clancy had probably settled into a chair.

River’s mind was moving a mile a minute. She had her gun. If she found the right angle, she could shoot Clancy through the window, go in, and take Ava right here and now. Only that would break the window and the others would likely hear. She knew from the floor plans that the next room down was a bathroom. She could sneak in through that, come around to the room and shoot Clancy. But shooting Clancy in front of Ava was sure to make the girl panic, which would also give them away. So she’d have to lure him out. She could go in through the bathroom, make some noise that would bring him out to investigate and—

River shook her head, crouching down under the window. She couldn’t. Not tonight. It would blow the mission. She could get Ava out alive now, even if that meant killing all of the men within. River was easily capable of pulling it off. But that would leave the primary mission objective, to find out exactly who was trying to break into SHIELD, unfulfilled.

River’s promise to Mrs. Ramirez hung heavily over her head, and seeing Ava hammered home the fear the girl must be feeling. On the other hand, there was SHIELD. The greater good. And Clint and Coulson, who were counting on her to do her part on this assignment. 

In the end, that was what won out, even if River’s more impulsive side wasn’t happy about it. Ava’s life wasn’t in danger until Friday. SHIELD would have resolved the situation by then. She was scared and uncomfortable now, but she could hang on for one more day. 

With those uneasy arguments to settle her resolve, River silently eased her way down to the end of the house and, keeping low, made for the trees where Clint had been stationed.

Where there was no Clint.

River switched her comm back on.

“Come in, Hawkeye. I’m at Point A. Where are you?”

His reply was terse and came immediately. _“Stay put, Talon. I’m on my way.”_

River settled down to wait.


	4. Chapter 4

_Thursday, July 24, 2008_  
 _0354 Hours_  
 _Harper Creek, North Carolina_

Clint found River under the tree where he had spent the last couple of hours watching the back of the house. She stood up as he approached.

“I got eyes on her. She’s okay,” she said.

“I told you to abort,” he replied.

As Clint had circled back around the house again, he’d found himself getting madder and madder with every step. He knew it was partly based in worry, and that he was feeling pressure from planning the op, but _dammit_. She could have tipped the terrorists off to the entire operation. She might have put them on alert for tomorrow night. Hell, she could have gotten herself killed.

Even in the dark he could see River’s guard go up.

“I saw an opening,” she said.

“You _forced_ an opening,” he countered. “One that wasn’t necessary. The bugs are in. We would have used those to get a fix on the kid. There was no need to approach the house.”

“I’m sorry, but since I’m the one who’s going to be infiltrating, I wanted a closer look.”

“We’re not talking about this one hundred yards from our target. Come on, let’s get back. Before Phil comes looking for us.”

He was treading on dangerous territory, he knew that. But River held back until they had crossed back over the creek and onto the Hertzels’ land. 

“Do you not trust me to do my job?” she asked.

Clint turned around so fast that River actually did walk right into him.

“Okay, don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t pull the ‘do you trust me’ card on me. You know damn well that I trust you. I trust you a hell of a lot more than you seem to trust me.”

River looked honestly taken aback. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Well, and maybe you’re right. It’s not like I actually know what the fuck I’m doing,” Clint said. “I’ve based the whole damn strategy on a fucking act of God and if it goes even slightly sideways I’ll have a possibly major threat to SHIELD in the wind and a dead little kid on my hands, but hey, maybe they’ll consider those to be acceptable losses. In the meantime, By-The-Book Hill and her team are going to be here in eight hours, and I really needed to know that I could count on you of all people.”

She was getting angry. Clint could see the glint in her eye. Just because her temper was usually controlled didn’t mean that it wasn’t quick. “You _can_ count on me,” she said. “And I do trust you. You know that.”

“Oh, yeah?” Clint loomed over her. Not by much, the difference in their heights wasn’t dramatic. But he was pushing into her personal space all the same. “Where did you live when you were a kid?”

The question popped out before he could stop it, but in the recklessness of the moment, Clint couldn’t feel sorry that it had. 

He could see a flicker of panic in her eyes before she hastily shut off her expression. “I have no idea what that has to do with this.”

Clint rocked back a little bit, and when he spoke it was very quiet. “Yeah. You trust me.” 

He turned and started back up the path and heard River, after a moment, follow him.

They walked the rest of the way back to the safe house in silence.

*****

Coulson had his game face on by the time Clint and River walked through the back door of the safe house. Enough so that he could pretend that he didn’t notice the tension between his two agents. Just as he could pretend that he hadn’t heard every word of their argument.

They’d been so deep into it that they’d apparently forgotten all about the open comm link. By the look of them, they still hadn’t remembered, and Coulson sure as hell wasn’t going to bring it up. Not right now.

“We’re getting good feeds from both listening devices,” Coulson said as Clint and River, silently and not looking at each other, divested themselves of their gear. “Moretti’s team will call us if there’s anything we need to be alerted to.”

Clint nodded curtly. “We ought to get some sleep while we can before Hill and her team get here.”

“Probably a good idea,” Coulson replied.

River didn’t say a word. She just crossed the main room, disappeared into the bedroom she’d appropriated, and closed the door with a quiet click. Clint flopped down on the Hertzels’ battered green sofa, crossed his arms over his stomach, and resolutely closed his eyes. Coulson stood looking over the scene for a few minutes, wondering if Clint would crack and decide he wanted to talk. 

He didn’t, though, and Coulson finally just turned out the kitchen light and went to the bedroom where he’d dropped his bag earlier. They were going to have to deal with this, but now was not the time.

Not that he had any idea _how_ he was supposed to deal with this, Coulson thought as he sank down on the bed. He was capable of wearing a lot of hats, but he wasn’t sure that “couples counselor” was on that list. Ever since he joined SHIELD, his longest relationship had been three months and, like all the others, was fairly casual. His job was too demanding and too sensitive for anything else, and really Coulson had never felt the lack of anything more permanent.

There was Valerie, of course, but that was hardly what anyone would call “conventional.” 

River had asked him about Valerie, once, after Clint had told her what their handler did on layovers in DC. “Let me see if I’m understanding this correctly,” she had said. “You have what is, in essence, a long-term, long-distance, open relationship with your old college girlfriend where you’re both free to date and sleep with other people who you then usually toss aside whenever one of you is in the other’s town?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Coulson had told her.

River had raised appraising eyebrows at him. “How very modern.”

Coulson didn’t know about modern. The logistics of him and Valerie were based more on mutual comfort and self-preservation. They had a shared history, cared about each other, could offer each other sanity checks, and usually managed to get together every handful of weeks. Trying to make it anything more formal would only end in disaster. Some of their college break-ups were still the stuff of legend among the friends they’d kept up with.

Based on his own history, Coulson sometimes marveled that Clint and River could spend as much time in each other’s pockets as they did, working together, eating together, training together, and, well, all the rest. He and Valerie would have started reenacting scenes from _The Shining_ within a month.

Bottom line, Coulson didn’t know quite how to steer Clint and River through this problem. It wasn’t that the two of them had never argued or disagreed before, but this felt like something more serious and their handler was out of his depth.

Coulson flopped backward with a groan. They really didn’t need another tempest on top of the one that was already brewing.

He didn’t expect to really sleep, but he did, surprisingly deeply at least for a few hours. An aberrant noise woke him mid-morning, and Coulson found himself reaching for his cell phone even before his eyelids processed the signal to open. It hadn’t been his phone, though, and when he heard another odd thump coming from outside, Coulson switched his grip to his gun instead. He moved cautiously to the bedroom window and peered out.

When he IDed the source of the noise, Coulson shook his head and lowered his gun. River was already up, and by the look of things was planning to start off her day doing some serious thinking. Coulson smothered a yawn and went to find the coffee.

Clint was still asleep on the sofa, but by the time the coffee pot gurgled to a stop, he’d sat up, scrubbing his hands over his face and through his hair. He stumped past Coulson and into the bathroom without a word, but when he remerged he accepted a mug of coffee with a grunt of thanks. He settled down on a stool at the kitchen counter, draining what had to have been half the cup in one swallow.

“Sleep okay?” Coulson asked.

He’d had some vague ideas on working around to the topic of what was up with Clint and River. Enough so that they could at least pull it together professionally before Hill and her team arrived.

Clint apparently had other ideas.

“Do you think River was kidnapped when she was a kid?” he asked.

Okay, so much for easing into this conversation. It wasn’t quite the segue into the topic Coulson had been expecting, but it wasn’t too far out of left field, either.

Coulson leaned back against the kitchen counter with his own mug of coffee.

“I’ve always thought it was a pretty good possibility,” he said. “Just based on things she’s told us.”

“But you’ve never found any real evidence, right?” 

Coulson shook his head. “No. I had SHIELD analysts see what they could trace. I even called in a favor with a contact at Scotland Yard. I’ve never found anything conclusive. That doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen, though.”

Clint mulled this over and set his mug down with a bit more force than necessary. “Why wouldn’t she just tell us if that’s what happened?”

Coulson sighed. “I couldn’t tell you,” he said. He’d often wondered the same thing himself. “Maybe she’s trying to protect Robert and Elizabeth, or at least the memory of them.” River didn’t often mention her foster parents, but she’d said enough over the years that Coulson had concluded two things: that they were deceased and that River had loved them. “Maybe there’s some reason she doesn’t want her biological family tracked down. Maybe the years before we found her were so bad that she just wants to forget all of it. Hell, maybe for some reason, she literally can’t remember what happened to her and doesn’t want to admit that. I really don’t know.”

Coulson wasn’t wild about all the unanswered questions, but at a certain point he’d had to decide whether or not he could trust River and work with her in spite of them. He’d decided that he could. So had Clint.

It didn’t stop Coulson from asking probing questions from time to time, even though he knew River would deflect them and that Clint didn’t like it. Clint, so far as Coulson knew, never really tried to dig out any answers, but that was to be expected. Clint had issues in that area. Coulson knew that his agent had a deep-seated belief that people would only want him around so long as he didn’t become too inconvenient. He’d had that experience with foster parents, teachers, the Army, the carnival, his brother. Hell, he’d expected it from Coulson on more than one occasion. 

Asking River too many questions would be tantamount to becoming inconvenient, and Coulson knew Clint didn’t want to lose her. He’d been genuinely surprised at the turn he’d heard their argument take last night.

“Do you mind if I ask why you want to talk about this?” Coulson asked.

Clint swirled the dregs of his coffee for a moment.

“This case is getting to her,” he finally said. “I can see it. That’s why she went so far off book last night. River doesn’t tweak over missions, and the only big difference here is the kid and the kidnapping.”

Coulson weighed his next question carefully. “Do you think she’s compromised?”

Clint looked up, brows drawn together in confusion. “What?”

“Do you think she needs to be pulled off this operation?”

It happened, sometimes. If an agent was too emotionally invested in a case, to the point they couldn’t do the job effectively, it was safer for everyone if that agent was removed from the equation. It had never happened with Clint or River, but there was a first time for everything. 

The immediate response was about what he expected.

Clint shook his head. “No. No, she doesn’t need to be pulled off.”

“Okay.” Coulson took a drink of his coffee. “Are you saying that as an agent or her boyfriend?”

“Jesus, Phil, you make me sound about twelve.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

Clint blew out a long breath. “No. No, I don’t think she should be taken off,” he said. “She just got eyes on the kid. Yeah, it was reckless, but she executed it well and we have more useful intel, now. She’s the best person to go in solo and get Ava out of the line of fire. No one else can sneak into a structure the way she can, and she can handle trouble if she runs into it. Hill wouldn’t be able to pull it off, and a male agent will probably make the kid freak the fuck out. We need her.”

Coulson nodded. “And you’re confident she’s up for it?”

There was only a slight hesitation before Clint answered. “She’s up for it.” He glanced toward the door to River’s room. “And unless we both want our asses handed to us, we probably want a new subject.”

“Don’t worry,” Coulson said. “She’s already up.” He waved his mug toward the back yard.

Clint followed the gesture, nodding and draining the last of his coffee. He pushed back from the counter. “I’m going to go get some air,” he said.

“Good idea,” Coulson said as Clint disappeared out the back door.

*****

_Thursday, July 24, 2008_  
 _0937 Hours_

The worst of the hurricane wouldn’t be hitting for another twelve hours or so, but the morning was grey and the wind was already picking up. River lay on her back on scratchy tarpaper shingles and watched the clouds blow by overhead. 

She had tossed and turned and dozed fitfully for a few hours after the recon mission, yet woke up with energy to burn. Adrenaline, most likely, from the mission, from the fight with Clint, and anticipation of what was to come tonight. Ordinarily, she’d try to run it off, but she didn’t want to stray that far from the safe house.

That left her climbing the walls. Quite literally.

The Hertzels had a large outbuilding behind their country cabin, something that looked like it was meant to house an RV. There were cords of firewood stacked against one of the outer walls, protected by tin roofing that formed an overhang about eight feet off the ground. The roof of the building proper was another eight feet or so higher. 

It had been pretty easy to climb up to the top.

This was Clint’s habit, really, climbing up to a high spot to think. He always said that it helped to get up above a situation, to pull back a little so he could see the problem from a distance. It had the added bonus that not many people came along to bother you on a rooftop.

River watched a pair of birds soar lazily overhead, riding the wind currents. She and Clint had needed a little of that distance after last night’s recon. She had emerged this morning to find him asleep on the sofa. He hadn’t even gone to the room he’d left his stuff in. It was like he was trying to make a point of some sort, not that River could begin to think what it was. In rapid succession she’d considered yelling at him, waking him up and apologizing, and just crawling on top of him and kissing him. Before she’d allowed herself to give any of those options serious thought, River had taken herself outside.

Now that she had some space and was a few hours removed from the recon mission, River acknowledged that she shouldn’t have approached the house, especially once she’d been ordered to stand down. She wouldn’t have ignored the order if it had come from Coulson (probably). Therefore she shouldn’t have ignored it from Clint. 

But she had and without even meaning to had managed to make all sorts shit come rising to the surface. She needed to find some way to at least start making things right before tonight. Don’t go into a hostile situation when you have unresolved issues with your partner. That might not be in a SHIELD handbook anywhere, but it was a good rule nonetheless.

Well, she wasn’t going to set anything to rights by staying up here all day, peaceful as it was. River sighed and prepared to descend.

Getting down was actually a little more difficult than getting up. River swung herself down from the overhang and dropped to the ground, cursing as her foot turned, sending her stumbling backwards. The curse turned into an undignified, involuntary squawk when a pair of arms caught her around the waist from behind.

Fortunately, it only took her a split second to recognize those arms, which probably saved Clint from having one of them broken.

“Just me,” he said unnecessarily, steadying her on her feet. 

“Thanks.” River gave herself a moment to compose her expression into one of careful neutrality before she pulled out of the light grip and turned to face her partner. “I didn’t know you were up,” she added, lamely.

“Not for very long.” His rumpled appearance bore that out. He was still wearing last night’s clothes and his hair was sticking up every which way. River resisted the impulse to reach up and smooth it down. Clint stuck his hands in his pockets. “You okay?” he asked.

River nodded. “I’m fine. My foot just turned wrong, that’s all.”

He just gave her a look. From the first day she’d met him, she’d gotten the feeling that he could see more of her than she ever wanted seen. “That’s not what I’m talking about,” he said.

River glanced away. It was a handy thing that the wind was blowing. It created any number of snapping and rustling noises in the trees that might draw her attention. “I’m fine,” she said again. 

“Look,” Clint said, “Coulson just asked me if you were compromised and needed to be pulled off of this mission. And I stood in there and told him no. I really need you to tell me if I’m right about that. Whatever the answer is, I’ll take you at your word.”

River’s knee-jerk instinct was to be angry, but really, could she blame Coulson for asking? Could she blame Clint?

“I’m not compromised.” River looked back at him, squaring her shoulders. “And I’m sorry about breaking ranks back at the house. I shouldn’t have done it and it won’t happen again. I’ve got your back.”

“Thanks.” He had started to smile a little bit. That was the thing about Clint. In rare instances he could hold a grudge to the grave and probably beyond. Outside of those rare exceptions, he was extraordinarily forgiving. “You know I have yours too, right?”

“Of course.”

“So.” His smile had turned the tiniest bit wry. “Maybe you’ll think about one day telling me where you came from.” River opened her mouth to say something, she didn’t really know what. Clint kept going, though, so she didn’t have to quickly come up with a deflection. “I’m not asking you to tell me now,” he said. “Or tomorrow, or next week, or anything like that. Just…when you’re ready, I’d like to hear about it.”

 _If ever there were an opportune time_ , River thought. _It so happens, Clint, that I’m the child of the companions of a Time Lord and haven’t technically been born yet. I was kidnapped by the military branch of a futuristic theocracy that wanted to use me to kill him. My name used to be Melody Pond. If I have a birth certificate on Earth, it’ll list my year of birth as 1932. I’m on my fifth body thanks to some alien patchwork on my DNA, but don’t worry. I can’t regenerate anymore because, in my past and in the Doctor’s future, I killed him and then burned myself out raising him from the dead again. Please tell me the Hertzels have tea._

On second thought, _no._

“I’ll remember,” she said instead.

“Okay.” Clint looked up at the Hertzels’ outbuilding. “What were you doing up on the roof?”

“Practicing.” Clint raised his eyebrows at her. “For winter. Thought I’d put my gib in to be Father Christmas at SHIELD this year.”

“You know you just sounded scary British, right?”

River felt the corners of her mouth tug up. “Sorry. I’ll watch that.” She turned to look at the garage roof. “Do you think she still believes in that?” she asked.

“Do I think who believes in what?” Clint sounded confused.

“Ava,” River said. “Do you think she still believes in Father Christmas? Santa Claus? She’s six. Do six-year-olds still believe in that sort of thing?”

“Don’t know,” Clint said. He looked up at the roof as well. “I honestly can’t remember if I did or not.” He gave her a quizzical look. “Did you?” he asked.

“I believed in all sorts of weird shit when I was six.” River tucked her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. “I promised her mother I’d get her back safe,” she said, not looking at Clint. “That’s why I was anxious to get a visual confirmation.”

She heard Clint sigh, but he just reached over and rested a hand on her shoulder.

“We’ll get her back,” he said. “We’ll get her back because you’re the one going in after her. Fuck, you’re better than Santa Claus.”

River smiled at him faintly. “Father Christmas.”

“Whatever.” Clint tipped his head toward the house. “Come on. I’m starving. Maybe the Hertzels have milk and cookies stashed away somewhere.”


	5. Chapter 5

_Thursday, July 24, 2008_  
 _1700 Hours_  
 _Harper Creek, North Carolina_

By noon, Agent Maria Hill and her strike team had made their way to Harper Creek in three nondescript SUVs, their arrivals staggered out in half-hour intervals to avoid the appearance of a convoy. All three vehicles were loaded down with equipment and supplies from SHIELD, including a generator powerful enough to keep their safe house up and running during the inevitable power outage. By the time the last SUV pulled up the Hertzels’ driveway, the wind had picked up enough to make the trees around the house creak.

SHIELD had forwarded a list of the strike team’s members earlier, so at least Clint had had some idea of who and what to expect. Hill had picked Strauss, Overby, and Gannaway, all solid agents with good reputations. Overby wasn’t Clint’s favorite person, and vice versa, thanks to an incident between the two agents a few years ago, not long after River had been brought into SHIELD. But Clint couldn’t deny that the man was good at his job. 

Hill was relatively new to SHIELD and had been posted on the New York base less than a year. She came with an Ivy League education, an impeccable service record with the FBI, and the ability to make Clint feel about three inches tall on occasion. He knew that Hill raised a mental eyebrow whenever she looked at their team: Clint, the ex-carnie and Army wash-out, and River, the former killer-for-hire. She had more use for Coulson, who had taken a more traditional career path.

On Clint’s part, at least, the feeling was more or less mutual. He didn’t like Hill, even if he did respect her from a safe distance. Fortunately, he didn’t have to like someone in order to work with them.

The Alpha and Beta Teams convened in the living room at 1700 hours for a final briefing.

“Hurricane Dorothy is holding at a Category 1 and still on track to starting hitting us later tonight,” Coulson said, nodding at the muted television in the corner. It had been tuned to the Weather Channel all day, mostly just to have something to fill the background. “There are no local evacuation orders. Moretti’s team has been monitoring the listening devices all day, and the targets are set to ride out the storm in the house.”

They had amassed a number of maps of the area as well as floor plans of the house. Clint saw Coulson give him a slight _go ahead_ nod. Clint cleared his throat and pointed at one of the maps.

“At nightfall we’ll move into position here,” he said. “It’s a barn approximately 500 yards from the house. We’ll ride out the front edge of the storm there and wait for the eye to pass over, at which point we’ll move into position here and here, with a clear line to the front and back entrances. 

“Ava Ramirez is being held in this room,” Clint continued. “Once the back side of the storm starts to hit, Agent Song will--”

“How do we know she’s being held in that room?” Hill interrupted.

River, who was standing beside Clint, answered. “I got visual confirmation last night during the recon mission. She’s there.”

Hill gave River an appraising look, but just nodded. Clint glanced cautiously between the two of them before he went on.

“Once the back side of the storm starts to hit, Agent Song will enter the house from this point,” he said, pointing to the room beside Ava’s. “The storm should provide enough cover to keep her from being heard. She’ll eliminate Clancy and remove Ava from the house. Once they’re clear, we can move in and take the men into custody.”

“And we’ll keep them in the house to begin interrogations,” Hill said. “There’s no point in trying to move them anywhere else until we can get a helicopter in.” She straightened up from where she’d been bent over the plans. “Also, we want Clancy alive.”

There was silence for a beat before Coulson spoke up. “Excuse me?”

“We want Martin Clancy alive for questioning.”

Clint glanced aside at River, who was frowning. “Clancy’s not going to be a member of this organization, whatever it is,” she said. “He’s a freelancer. I doubt he’ll have much useful intelligence.”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Hill said. “But you yourself alerted us to the fact that he’s ‘freelanced’ for a lot of people over the years. We want to know what he did and for whom, and we want to know about anyone he may have worked with. We need him alive.”

River was not looking at Clint. He was pretty sure she didn’t want to look conspiratorial in front of fellow agents. “Clancy won’t stray far from the girl,” she said. “Incapacitating him without putting her in danger or alerting the other men in the house is going to be difficult. A fast, clean kill will mean less risk to the mission.”

“We’ve thought of that,” Hill said. She turned to unzip a bag sitting in the chair behind her and pulled out a small case which she handed to River. Clint looked over her shoulder while she opened it, revealing a small syringe filled with clear liquid.

“Inject it anywhere in the musculature, and he’ll drop in a matter of seconds,” Hill said. “R&D’s sedatives are very effective. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that.”

For half a second, Clint suspected Hill of taking a jab at River. Judicious use of a knock-out dart was how he had captured River in Bulgaria almost three years ago. But Hill had sounded nothing more than matter-of-fact. More likely she just meant that River would be fully well aware of what kind of equipment R&D was capable of producing.

River closed the case with a snap, but her expression was smooth and calm. “Understood,” she said.

Clint kept his own face impassive. Hill wouldn’t know to be wary of that carefully serene look on River’s face. Hell, even Coulson might miss it. Clint knew, though, that that expression could be as dangerous as an openly murderous glare. More so, even.

Clint could have told her, but he didn’t.

*****

_Friday, July 25, 2008_  
 _0011 Hours_

They had all just embraced the fact that they were going to get soaked. What Coulson had been less prepared for was the fact that raindrops being blown at seventy miles-per-hour fucking _hurt_. Even outfitted as he was in protective gear including a waterproof balaclava and goggles, the rain still found places to sting him.

Coulson squinted through the pouring rain at the dark house. He was covering the front along with Strauss and Overby. The power had gone during the first wave of the hurricane. (If it hadn’t, Strauss was packing a pair of heavy-duty wire clippers that would have done the job.) Coulson could see two dim, localized lights in the living room, lanterns or candles.

“Hawkeye?” Coulson had to tamp two fingers over his earpiece and clamp his palm over his other ear to block out the howling wind. He had to talk more loudly than he was comfortable with to make himself heard, but the consolation was that there was no way anyone inside was going to be able to hear him over Dorothy. “It looks like we’ve got people up front. How’s it looking in back?”

Clint, River, Hill, and Gannaway had taken up position at the back of the house. Both exits were effectively covered. Once River had gotten Ava clear, they’d move in. So long as they kept surprise on their side, the men inside should be overwhelmed easily.

Clint’s voice was muffled by the sound of the wind. _“I can see one man in the kitchen,”_ he said. _“And we know Clancy is in Ava’s room.”_

 _“We_ assume _we know where Clancy and the girl are,”_ Hill said. _“You have a contingency plan for if they’ve moved her?”_

 _“Yes,”_ Coulson heard River reply. _“Get her out a different way.”_

 _“Only as long as you can do it without endangering the mission or killing the men inside,”_ Hill said. _“We need all the information we can get from them.”_

Coulson imagined he could hear River grit her teeth over the comm. He knew Hill wasn’t trying to be overbearing. Hill was a good field agent, and she had a reputation for being incredibly by the book. SHIELD wanted the men taken alive, and she would work to ensure that that order was carried out. They all would, but things could go off the rails. There was always that possibility, and this operation had better odds than usual.

 _“I remember,”_ River said. _“But you’d be amazed at what some men can live through.”_

 _Comforting, Song,_ Coulson would have said if their team had been working this op alone. 

Instead it was Clint who spoke up. _“One hurdle at a time, people. Talon, if the kid has been moved, use your best judgment. Keep your eyes open for the others and advise us of anything you see and we’ll go from there.”_

_“Understood.”_

_“All right,”_ Clint said. _“Dorothy’s not going to hang around for us forever. Let’s start the clock.”_

Coulson nodded, even though of course there was no way Clint could see him. _Good job, kid._ He knew that once the mission was underway, Clint’s grip on the reins would become more confident.

Coulson kept his eyes on the lights at the front of the house. Talon was going in. Now all the rest of them could do was wait.

*****

Clint knelt in the mud and watched River slip up to the house.

He didn’t like this. He never liked seeing River walk right up to danger while he watched from a distance. It wasn’t because he thought that River couldn’t handle it, because he knew damn well that she could. And he’d never admit out loud that he didn’t like it, because this was the job and he’d no more ask River to avoid dangerous situations than he’d ask Phil to leave SHIELD and go become the accountant that his mother had wanted him to be. 

But confidence in someone’s abilities and respect for their decisions didn’t equal “liking.”

He especially didn’t like that it was his order that was sending River into the house. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this leadership thing.

Clint was used to covering River from a distance. But it was different, holding a rifle or a bow and having a clear line of sight, being able to see if things were about to get hairy. This was something else. Once she was in that house she’d be out of sight. Hell, she was already hard to track now, in the dark and the rain, even for him. Once she was inside, the only way they’d know if something was wrong would be if she signaled over the comm, or if they heard all hell breaking loose from inside. And if they heard all hell breaking loose inside over the sound of the storm overhead, they were truly fucked.

Oh, yeah. He hated this.

Clint squinted through his goggles as he watched River tuck herself against the outer wall of the new wing of the house. 

Her voice came very faintly in his ear. _“Hawkeye? Any movement inside?”_

Clint carefully craned his head out a bit from behind the pile of old, rusted kitchen appliances they were using as cover. The light in the kitchen hadn’t moved. Even through the rain, he could make out a man sitting at the kitchen table. It looked as if he was reading by the light of a camp lantern.

“Negative in back. Aerie?”

 _“No lights moving in front,”_ Coulson said over the comm.

 _“Copy,”_ River said. _“I’m going in.”_

*****

She had flat out refused to wear Kevlar.

River rarely wore protective gear on missions anyway. It was generally her job to sneak in under a mark’s guard and get up close and nothing would have screamed _hey, I’m up to something_ like a bulletproof vest. Any number of times, she’d gone in without a gun as well. Sometimes going into a situation armed could be riskier than going without weapons. River knew any number of ways to kill or incapacitate with nothing but her hands, and could, in Clint’s words, fashion a lethal weapon out of week-old chewing gum and a paperclip if she had to. She was never truly unarmed.

She could have gotten away with wearing a vest tonight. River was aiming for _invisible_ not _undercover._ Clint had briefly tried to talk her into it, but the bulk would have made climbing in and out of the house more difficult, not to mention hindering her if she had to engage someone hand-to-hand. Clint accepted the arguments and hadn’t pressed it.

She was armed, though. There was a 9mm with silencer at the small of her back and a knife in her boot. She had picked the knife up years ago in Algeria. It wasn’t much bigger than a letter opener, but it had gotten her out of many a tight spot and was very easy to hide.

Hill’s syringe of sedative was secured to her belt.

River tucked herself under the eave. The bathroom window above her was dark. The next window down, the one through which she’d seen Ava the night before, was curtained, but she could see faint light bleeding around the edges. River stripped off her goggles, hood, and gloves, dropping them to the ground. She winced as the raindrops lashed her face, but she’d be indoors soon, and she didn’t want the hindrances. River removed the small glass-cutter from her belt and, after a quick look to make sure the bathroom was definitely vacant, set about inviting herself in.

River had had all afternoon to plan out what she would do once she got inside. She wanted to get in and out with Ava as quickly as possible, but first she’d have to deal with Clancy.

Of course, Clancy had needed dealing with for a very long time. 

Once she was in the bathroom, River reached up and quietly turned her comm off. With any luck, Clint would assume it was just storm interference. She cracked the door open slightly, checked the hall, and withdrew again. This was the safest place to engage Clancy.

It didn’t take much to lure him in. River only had to make enough noise so that the man in the next room could hear it, but not the others in the main part of the house. And she knew Clancy well enough to know that he would come to investigate on his own and not summon any of the others. River was hiding behind the door when Clancy, carrying a small flashlight, walked in.

The look of genuine shock on his face when he turned around and saw River might have been the most honest expression of emotion Clancy had displayed in his life. Though the shock might also have come from the blade that was buried hilt-deep in his trachea.

Clancy sputtered soundlessly as he tried to draw in air, his eyes going wide with panic. Out of desperation, or possibly just reflex, his hands came up and wrapped around River’s throat, squeezing painfully tight. River winced, but stayed calm. She could already feel strength draining out of his grip. The two grappled silently in the small bathroom for a few moments and Clancy, with one final burst of strength, managed to slam her backward into the wall. Then his hands dropped away. River, her left hand fisted in his shirt, was able to drag him down to his knees on the tile floor.

Clancy’s eyes were starting to dim and his mouth worked noiselessly, making him look far less like the boogeyman and more like a landed fish. River felt a smile cross her face, an old expression, one that had begun to feel foreign to her over the last couple of years.

Mel Pond’s smile.

She leaned in close, whispering in Clancy’s ear. “I told you I’d kill you.”

River pulled the knife out of the man’s windpipe, grabbed a handful of his hair, and tipped his head to the side. She drove the point of her knife upward underneath the corner of his jaw, severing the carotid artery.

She could feel blood soak into her pants and shirt along with the rainwater, disappearing into the black material. River quickly went through Clancy’s pockets until she found a single key, then shoved his body up against the bathroom wall behind the door. 

She paused for a moment to catch her breath. Her neck was going to be black and blue by the feel of it, but that was all right. It would lend credence to her report later. River took the syringe off of her belt, uncapped it, and rolled it behind the toilet.

So much for that.

River switched her comm back on. “Clancy’s down,” she said. “I’m going in for Ava now. We should be out in a minute.”

 _“Copy, Talon,”_ Clint said. He sounded relieved. _“Be advised, your comm dropped out.”_

“Understood. I’ll keep checking it.”

River cracked the bathroom door, listening once more for any sign that someone might have heard the scuffle and be coming up to check on things. Of course, if the other men were anything like she had been, they’d be content to keep as much distance between themselves and Clancy as possible. River stepped out into the dark hallway. She stopped long enough to stick the knife back into her boot and wipe her bloody hand against her pants leg. 

She inserted the key into the lock and turned it with a faint click. River reached into the collar of her shirt and pulled out Mrs. Ramirez’s little beaded cross. Unhooking the clasp, she wrapped the cord around her hand and eased open the door of Ava’s room.

River had spent time in prison cells with more warmth. The room was all undressed sheetrock, plywood, and thin carpet, and was largely bare. There was a camp lantern on the floor by the door, a chair where Clancy would have sat guard, old sheets strung up by way of curtains at the window, and a mattress on the floor where a little girl was faking sleep.

River closed the door, turning the deadbolt. She knelt down beside the mattress. Ava was curled up in a ball, face buried in the pillow, body tense and breath sharp, no doubt assuming that her jailer was back. 

“Ava?” River said softly. She smiled when the girl immediately turned her head out of the pillow, blinking at her from under a tangle of dark hair. 

River’s outwardly young appearance was a poor reflection of the years and events she’d lived through, and sometimes it inconvenienced her. Right now, though, it was one of her biggest advantages. Even in her black uniform, disheveled, with her hair braided tightly back, she looked more like a high-school-aged babysitter than anything even remotely threatening.

At the very least, Ava didn’t seem inclined to scream at the sight of her.

“Ava, my name’s River. I’ve brought you something.” River held out Mrs. Ramirez’s necklace.

Ava looked at it and then back at River, as if trying to reconcile her mother’s necklace in the hand of this strange person. After a moment, she reached out and took it, small fingers lightly brushing River’s. She gripped it so tight that River could see the thin wire arms of the cross bend.

“Your mommy asked me to give that to you,” River said, keeping half an ear on the hallway outside. “I’m going to take you to her, but you need to come with me right now and be very, very quiet, all right?”

She watched Ava’s eyes fill up as the little girl made a wet hiccupping noise. River hoped to God that the child wouldn’t decide to cry or fight her. It would make getting out of here a hell of a lot more difficult. Instead she just said in a small voice, “Am I going to be in trouble?”

River shook her head. “No. No, you’re not in trouble at all.” Ava gulped and nodded and didn’t object when River took her hand and led her over to the window.

She had pulled down the sheets and was just starting to push the window open when she heard Clint’s voice in her ear say, _“Talon, we’re seeing some movement in the house,”_ immediately followed by the sound of said movement in the hallway outside.

Someone rattled the locked door. “Clancy?”

“Shit. Hawkeye, I think we’re about to have trouble,” River said, shoving the window up and grabbing Ava, hoisting her over the sill.

The next sixty-two seconds were a blur of chaos. River dropped Ava out of the window. By the time she had slung her legs over the sill to follow, there were shouts from the hallway. River slipped a little in the wet grass as she landed, but she kept her feet. An angry shout came from her right, and it wasn’t a voice she recognized. They’d been followed outdoors.

If River had any doubts that the figure running round the side of the house wasn’t a member of her own team, the bullet that whizzed over her head would have been conclusive evidence. River grabbed Ava and shoved her flat onto the ground. Before she could draw her own weapon and return fire, she heard another shot and felt a small, sharp tug against her upper arm. 

Then River heard a sharp cry from the man. There had been no retort from a gun this time. River couldn’t see in the dark and the rain, but she was willing to bet that the man had just caught an arrow the hard way.

There was an eruption of comm chatter, but River still heard Clint’s voice, loud and clear. _“He’s down. You’re clear. Grab the kid and go.”_

River picked Ava up off the ground and started running. Her task now was to get Ava clear of the fray so that all hell could break loose without the complication of a civilian in the crossfire. 

“We’re clear,” she said, as soon as she passed the fence-line into the pasture. River paused just long enough to swing Ava around onto her back. She tried not to worry about the fact that Clint didn’t answer. There was still plenty of comm chatter coming over the feed. They all just had their hands full, that was all.

Head down in a wind that made it hard to breathe, River started off for the barn at a steady jog.

It was a fortunate thing that River’s sixth sense of where she was in Time and Space fed into an uncanny sense of direction. Clint had likened her to a homing pigeon with GPS on more than one occasion. Visibility in the dark and driving rain was next to zero. There was a constant steady roar that was part wind, part rain, and part the rush of the now-swollen creek on the south side of the pasture. Still, River knew precisely where she was going. The footing was treacherous and her feet slipped out from under her once, sending her falling forward onto her hands and knees. Her right knee landed on something sharp, either a stone or one of the many rusted pieces of metal crap they’d seen littering the pasture yesterday. Ava clung gamely to her back during the stumble and while River cursed and pushed herself back to her feet. She hobbled the last fifty feet and ducked into the vine-covered barn with a sigh of relief.

“Hawkeye?” she said automatically as soon as she was clear of the rain and wind. “Hawkeye, come in.”

She held her breath at the crackle of static before she got a response.

 _“We’re okay,”_ Clint replied. _“Situation is secure. No casualties on our end. Are you all right?”_

“Yes,” River said, easing Ava down off of her back. “We’re at Point A. We’re fine.”

Ava was all right, wet and muddy and bewildered as she was. River was well enough to be going along with. Her knee throbbed and she could feel blood running down her shin, and her upper arm burned, but the bullet had only grazed the muscle. Certainly nothing that was going to kill her in the next few hours.

 _“Good,”_ Clint said. _“Just sit tight. We’ll be there soon.”_

“Copy that.”

River closed her eyes and took a moment to breathe. They’d done it. They’d really pulled it off.

She opened her eyes again when Ava tugged on her hand. “Is my mommy here?” she asked.

River smiled faintly. “No, honey.” River turned on one of the emergency lanterns that they’d packed into the barn along with the rest of their gear. “She and your dad are back at your house in Dallas. We’re going to take you there as soon as we can, and they are going to be so happy to see you. But we have to wait until the storm is over, all right?”

Ava was still wearing the pink pajamas she’d been abducted in, which were now soaked through and covered in mud. Amazingly, she had managed to keep her grip on her mother’s necklace. It now looked more like a tangled wad of wire, beads, and string than anything else, but she had it. River took it, shook it out a little, and looped it over Ava’s head before wrapping her in a Mylar blanket, picking her up and carrying her into the sturdiest center stall, and settling them both down on the ground. 

She sat so that she had a clear line of sight to the open doorway and had her gun resting within easy reach, just in case. River reached around Ava, who was curled up against her chest, and felt along her right knee until her fingers found a rip in the fabric of her pants. Her fingers came away bloody, but at worst she was probably looking at some stitches and a tetanus shot. Considering the mission, it was a very low price. 

Ava huddled a little closer as a particularly loud gust of wind howled overhead. “It’s okay,” River said, resting her chin on Ava’s head. “This will all be over soon.”


	6. Chapter 6

_Friday, July 25, 2008_  
 _0219 Hours_  
 _Harper Creek, North Carolina_

The rain was finally starting to lighten up a bit as Coulson and Clint hiked across the pasture to the old barn. Now that they didn’t have to worry about being seen, they had the heavy-duty flashlights out, which was good because the ground was littered with windblown debris. 

Hill and her team would remain in the house with the terrorists, gathering all the information they could and softening the men up until SHIELD could send a helicopter to collect them and a team to start taking apart the house for any useful intel. The man who had shot at River and Ava had taken an arrow to the thigh. The others had taken a minor pummeling while being subdued. 

They had found Clancy’s body in the bathroom. Hill wasn’t happy, but it wasn’t like they could do anything about it now.

For Coulson, Clint, and River, the active part of this mission was finished. Now it was time to regroup and see where exactly the pieces had fallen. Coulson looked over at Clint as they trudged across the field, and reached out and clapped one hand on his shoulder. It hit with a loud squelch. Clint responded with a tired but amused smile.

“Good job,” Coulson said, simply.

Clint nodded, but just said, “My feet are never going to dry out.”

“I hear that.” Coulson’s flashlight beam picked out the open doorway of the barn. He raised his voice. “Just us, River!”

As Coulson had half expected, Ava Ramirez freaked out a little at the sight of him and Clint, but River had the girl calmed down fairly quickly. While they settled into the stall to wait out the rest of the storm, River talked. And talked. And talked. Her voice was pitched low and soothing, and God, Coulson hadn’t heard her sound so Scottish since the night he and Clint had first met her in Bulgaria. 

It made for interesting listening, that was for sure, even if River was making it all up. Coulson sat very quietly, forearms resting on his bent knees, head tipped back against the wall, eyes half-closed. He listened to her talk about a broken-down castle by the sea with a bathtub in the kitchen and electricity in only two rooms. The funny thing, Coulson thought, was that just given what he knew (or more importantly, didn’t know) about River, he wouldn’t have put it past her to be telling the truth.

True or not, the talking was working. Ava was curled up in River’s lap with one hand gripped tight in the fabric of her shirt. When River finally wore down, she passed the ball to Clint.

“Now when Clint was a kid, he traveled with a circus. Can you believe that? A real circus with lions and elephants and acrobats. He has some good stories, but he should tell you those. He tells them better.”

Clint only fumbled slightly before he picked the ball up and ran with it.

“Um…yeah. Well, there was this one time, we were set up in a little town in Missouri in a big field by the local high school. And one day while we were there—I guess just because it was a nice day—a couple of the elephants decided they wanted to go exploring…”

Coulson smiled to himself. They were a good team, those two. He never would have guessed it a couple of years ago. Frankly, he had thought that Fury was crazy when he had told Coulson he wanted to partner up Clint and River, but that was the thing about Fury. There was always some method to the man’s madness. Clint and River had taken their partnership to a personal level seven months ago, and Coulson had held his breath for a while. He still did some days. He still wasn’t sure if Clint had made the right call to keep River on this operation, but he had, and the success rate for this mission was well above ninety percent. Three terrorists captured, a hostage recovered unharmed, and no serious injuries to any of the SHIELD agents.

It might not have been the right call, but it had been a good one. Even if they had lost out on questioning Clancy, it had been a good call.

In time, Ava fell asleep, the storm outside died down, and daylight began to filter into the old barn. In the silence, Coulson caught Clint’s and River’s eyes and smiled.

It was a job very well done.

*****

_Friday, July 25, 2008_  
 _0734 Hours_

Once it was daylight, Agent Gannaway pulled an SUV up to the barn as close as he could get so that Clint, Coulson, and River could pick their way back to the safe house by the road instead of trying to hike cross-country along with Ava.

“How’s it going up there?” Clint asked, nodding up the hill to the house.

“Making progress,” Gannaway replied. “Hill had us move Clancy’s body into the room we set up for interrogation. It’s been pretty effective on one of them. The other two are going to be a little harder to crack. Hill’s itching to get a team into the house to start taking it apart.”

“It shouldn’t be too long,” Clint said.

Storm damage or no, SHIELD would find a way to make it in.

The world looked very different by the light of day. Blue sky, fluffy white clouds, nice cool breeze. It was a beautiful morning as long as you ignored the mess on the ground, Clint thought. River, on the other hand, was looking more worse for wear.

At the safe house, Clint waited with thinly disguised impatience to get River on the business end of the first aid kit. His partner first insisted on getting Ava reasonably cleaned up and into the new clothes she’d had Hill’s team bring in with their additional supplies. River herself reemerged from her commandeered room (Ava at her heels) wearing a tank top and pair of shorts that she would ordinarily sleep in. With a quick, apologetic smile at Clint, she got Ava settled with some food before she finally let him sit her down on a kitchen stool. The first aid kit was already open on the counter.

River was developing a fairly spectacular ring of bruises around her throat, but there wasn’t much Clint could do about those and River claimed that they didn’t hurt much. The cut on her knee had gone deep, though, enough to need a few stitches. The bullet had left a messy graze on her arm, just barely shallow enough to avoid being a through-and-through. It needed cleaning out and bandaging.

“You got clipped by a bullet and you didn’t think to say anything?” Clint said as he scrubbed the wound out as gently as he could. “For fuck’s sake, River.”

River was trying not to wince. “Watch your language,” she said mildly.

Clint glanced down. Ava had abandoned the remnants of her breakfast and was parked at his hip looking up at him with wide eyes. “Sorry, kid,” he said.

Ava still wasn’t quite willing to stray too far from River. The little girl had been sticking to the agent like a small shadow, and River had been allowing it. But she seemed to have moved on from being actively afraid of Clint and Coulson. Clint had apparently cemented himself into her good graces with stories about runaway elephants. It had taken her a bit longer to warm up to Coulson. As soon as they’d gotten back to the house, though, once Coulson had called a report in to Fury, he’d patched through a video call to Dallas so that Ava could see and talk to her parents. This bit of wizardry seemed to have convinced Ava that he was one of the good guys. 

It was weird, having a kid in a safe house. Weird and wrong. Kids shouldn’t be anywhere near shit like this.

But River, for all that she’d get on his ass for swearing in front of the kid, wasn’t really attempting to shield Ava from anything else. She hadn’t tried to shoo her off and keep her from watching while Clint had stitched her knee up. Nor had she tried to distract Ava from looking curiously at her weapons when she’d laid the on the kitchen table, though she’d firmly told her not to touch. Clint didn’t know if it was the best approach to take with a child who had been through what Ava Ramirez had been through, but so far it didn’t seem to be hurting anything.

“You should have said something last night,” Clint said, working at the thick crust of old blood with antiseptic-soaked gauze. 

River looked down at Ava. “He’s going to need the scissors and the tape from that box in a minute,” she said, nodding at the first aid kit. “Find those for him, all right?”

Ava nodded and climbed up onto the neighboring kitchen stool so that she could start poking through the contents of the first aid kit. While she was busying herself, River looked back to Clint.

“It wasn’t serious, and there wasn’t much we could have done about it then,” she said. “If it’s any consolation I didn’t really feel any of it until this morning.”

Clint couldn’t call bullshit on that. He was well acquainted with the pain-numbing effects of adrenaline during a mission. It hadn’t made him feel any better back at the barn when he’d watched River push halfway to her feet only for her face to go white and for her to slide back down the wall again. It had been only then that he’d found the injuries, and he’d been kicking himself ever since for not having checked her out before.

“Oh, it’s not,” he replied, with enough of a smile that she’d know that while he wasn’t happy he wasn’t harboring any hard feelings. 

River smiled faintly in response. “Yeah. Didn’t think so.”

She’d given him enough hell about getting hurt during their partnership. 

Clint made one more pass at the bullet graze. “You have a bad habit of pushing things aside and letting them sit and fester,” he said. “It’s not good for you.”

He wasn’t just talking about physical wounds, and Clint knew that she knew that. This time, though, she looked him in the eye instead of looking away. 

In his occasional fanciful moments, Clint thought he must be the closest thing the world had to an expert on River Song’s eyes, beyond the fact that they were big and brown and damn beautiful. He’d seen them guarded and closed off. He’d seen them go sharp with anger and dulled by pain or drugs. He’d seen them calculating and determined and alive with mischief. He’d seen them watch him with honest affection and go wide and dark when his body moved over hers. River’s eyes were very easy for him to read.

Sometimes, like right at this moment, they looked disturbingly old.

“I know,” she said. Clint raised his eyebrows in surprise. He’d expected her to sidestep the subject. “And I’ll think about what you said.”

“Good.” Clint absently reached up to rub at a smudge on her cheek. In an instant, that odd impression of age in her eyes bled away, replaced by simple fatigue and fondness.

“Are you going to kiss her?” 

Clint and River looked over at Ava who was still perched on the next stool. She was watching them with an expression that was half curious and half mildly scandalized, no doubt at this display of cootie-spreading behavior.

There was a faint squeak of wheels as Phil rolled the desk chair he was sitting in backwards past the breakfast bar to see what was going on.

River looked back at Clint with a smirk. “We just got made by a first grader.”

“Yeah,” Clint said. “Let’s make sure no one finds out about that.”

*****

An hour later, patched up, wearing street clothes, and fortified by a cup of tea and a peanut butter sandwich, River was ready to face the wrath of Agent Hill.

SHIELD had sent a helicopter to the farm to pick up the terrorists for transport to a detention facility and to leave a team to go over the house and property with a fine-toothed comb. Hill and her team had come back to the safe house to help pack up before they were all extracted, Alpha Team to Dallas with Ava, and Beta Team back to New York.

“We need to discuss Clancy,” Hill said to River without preamble as soon as they arrived. 

River nodded. She’d expected as much. Coulson frowned, though.

“Agent Hill, I’m sure the debrief can wait until we’re back in New York.”

Hill just raised an eyebrow at him. “I want a report while it’s still fresh in Agent Song’s mind,” she said. “We--” She frowned when she caught sight of Ava.

The arrival of new people at the house (in particular, three strange, imposing-looking men) had sent Ava bodily hiding herself behind River, pressing herself against the backs of her legs. River thought she heard Hill sigh.

“We should probably take this outside,” Hill said. 

River nodded again. “Of course.”

“I’m coming, too,” Clint said. When Hill have him a speculative look, he added, “I was the one heading up this mission. That means Song was under my command. If you’re debriefing her, I should be there.”

After a moment, Hill nodded. “That’s fair.”

“Ava,” River said, reaching around to detach the girl’s hand from her pants leg. “Stay with Phil for a moment. We need to go outside and talk.”

They stayed on the front porch where they could all be easily seen through the windows.

“You were ordered to take Clancy alive,” Hill said.

“I know,” River replied. She was standing easily at parade rest. “But the situation went sideways. He managed to knock the sedative out of my hand. I don’t even know where it went. He was going to shout for backup. I had to stop him, otherwise the entire mission would have been blown.”

“We found the syringe,” Hill said. “How do you account for your comm going down?”

“To be honest, I didn’t even notice,” River replied. “I assume it was storm interference. Or it might have glitched when he slammed me into the wall.”

The purple handprints on her throat were hard to argue with. River knew that she could sell the story that she’d had no choice but to put Martin Clancy down.

“We got the terrorists, which was the primary goal of this mission,” Clint said. “And we got Ava back safe, which was the secondary one. Clancy was, at best, an add on, no matter what kind of intel he could have given us, assuming he could have given us any at all. As far as what happened inside the house, Director Fury will get a full report in the requisite timeframe.”

It was Clint’s not-so-subtle way of pointing out that they reported to Fury, not to Hill. River didn’t smile, much as she wanted to. Hill would likely have taken it the wrong way, as an expression of smug triumph from a pair of tightly knit operatives. A pair of operatives who, in Hill’s view, got away far too often with bending the rules.

“I’ll look forward to reading it,” Hill said. No doubt to remind Clint that while she may not be in charge, she was still in the command loop. Hill turned and went back inside.

“Thanks,” River said to Clint while they were alone on the porch.

Clint half smiled. “Whatever happened back there with Clancy? I know you did what you had to do,” he said. He glanced in through the window. “We should go back in. I think the kid needs you.”

“She needs her mom and dad,” River said, reaching for the door latch. She looked at Clint over her shoulder. “I’m just the life preserver.”

*****

_Friday, July 25, 2008_  
 _1330 Hours_  
 _Dallas, Texas_

Mr. and Mrs. Ramirez were waiting at the airport to meet them in Dallas. Clint, Coulson, and River didn’t stick around for much of the reunion, instead opting to quietly excuse themselves. Ava was where she needed to be. What the family needed now was to work toward getting back to normal. The presence of three agents was the antithesis of normal.

SHIELD would probably keep some sort of protective cover on the Ramirezes for a while, Clint knew. The agency would make sure that Mr. and Mrs. Ramirez had any details from the mission that were pertinent to their daughter’s recovery. As for their team, their part in all of this was over.

They walked back to the jet largely in silence. Coulson trailed a few feet behind Clint and River, talking quietly on his cell phone. Clint walked close enough for his arm to brush River’s, a habit that they’d fallen into. Standing quite literally shoulder-to-shoulder.

“Did you really live in an old castle?” he asked her as they walked up the ramp into the jet.

In spite of his resolve to ask no more questions, to let River come to him in that respect, he couldn’t quite curb his curiosity.

River just glanced over with a slightly mischievous, if very tired, smile. “Did you really chase an elephant through a high school football game?”

Clint knew that was as much of an answer as he was likely to get. At least for now.

He also knew that his partner had slept like crap for the last few days, when she had slept at all. Once they’d reached cruising altitude, it didn’t take much convincing on Clint’s part to get River to lie down across his lap, her head on his balled-up jacket. Hill wasn’t here to see, Coulson wouldn’t care, and the pilots had their consoles to keep them occupied. River gave his arm a brief squeeze before her grip went slack and her breathing grew deep and even.

Clint was drifting himself, his hand idly playing with a loose strand of her hair. He smiled a bit, shaking his head internally. Castles by the sea. You never know what you were going to get out of River. That was one of the reasons he loved—

Clint froze for a second while the universe did a tilt-a-whirl spin around him.

He loved her.

Holy shit.

Clint automatically looked guiltily over at Coulson, certain that his handler would be able to see the realization written all over his face. Coulson had been amazingly accepting about the fact that his agents were sleeping together. If he’d played it by the book, he would have brought it to Fury’s attention and Clint and River would have had to go through a specialized training seminar and been subject to regular evaluations to ensure that their personal relationship wasn’t compromising their working relationship. There would have been a good likelihood that they wouldn’t have been allowed to work in the field together. As far as SHIELD regs were concerned, emotional connections were potential weak points.

Clint and River’s intimate relationship would have ceased to be all that intimate. The whole base would have known about it.

Instead, Coulson had just rolled with it and largely left them to navigate things on their own, trusting them to do their jobs. Clint was grateful to his friend for that, especially since he knew that it had cost Coulson some peace of mind. 

But being friends with benefits was…well, it wasn’t casual, but it also wasn’t love. Coulson’s peace of mind would probably be shot to hell if he knew that, without even meaning to, Clint had thrown himself off the edge of Epically Screwed Cliff without a parachute.

Coulson seemed to be half-asleep, though, thank God, and totally unaware of the sudden epiphany Clint was trying to swim through. Clint looked down at River as she shifted slightly in her sleep. What would she think? Sometimes Clint couldn’t believe that they’d come as far as they had since that alley in Sofia. Would she feel crowded? Like he was expecting too much of her? Would it scare her off? It was so damned hard to tell with her, sometimes.

Maybe, Clint thought, the safest course of action would be to go to ground, so to speak. Play it cool, watch, gather additional information, and then decide how to proceed. By the time the jet put down in New York, he had firmly convinced himself that this was the best strategy. 

He’d take a page from River’s book and keep this secret close for a while.

*****

_Saturday, July 26, 2008_  
 _1814 Hours_  
 _SHIELD Headquarters, New York_

“I have to hand it to him, Phil,” Fury said, reaching for a third slice of pizza. “Barton did good.”

“He did.” Coulson leaned back in his chair on the other side of Fury’s desk, idly twirling his half-empty beer by the neck of the bottle. “Damn kid’s the only person I know crazy enough to ride a hurricane into a hostile base.”

Coulson wasn’t even trying to keep the pride out of his voice. He was tired, full of pizza, and relieved that the mission had come off successfully. Besides, he knew Fury wouldn’t hold it against him.

“When the hell did he grow up on us?” Fury asked.

Coulson chuckled and shook his head. “Damned if I know, Boss.”

God knew, Clint’s career path through SHIELD hadn’t been the easiest. He’d been a dark horse from day one, a middle school dropout, ex-carnie, ex-sharpshooter who’d been staring down the barrel of a prison sentence. He had been dropped into an organization that hand-picked the country’s best and brightest and he’d made it very clear that he didn’t give a fuck what any of them thought.

It had taken Coulson a while to realize that there were a few people whose opinions Clint truly did care about. Coulson was one of them.

The kid had had issues: authority issues, anger issues, trust issues, abandonment issues. But they had worked through them. Coulson had been afraid that Clint’s deafness would blow all that progress to hell, but they’d got lucky and caught a reprieve.

Clint’s call to bring River Song in alive had had the potential to end Clint’s career in a very different way. There again they’d gotten lucky. Clint was still on the shit list of some members of the World Security Council, but he was too valuable an asset and (usually) kept his nose clean enough that there was no real action they could take against him. 

Besides, River had borne out Clint’s belief in her, that she belonged at SHIELD. 

Clint had always been confident in his aim and his ability to adapt a strategy mid-stream and run with it. Now, with more of that same luck, he’d see that he could lead as well.

“The three of you make one hell of a team,” Fury said.

Coulson grinned a bit. “I suppose you knew all along that we would.”

Hard to believe that Coulson had actually argued against River being added to their team once.

Fury looked incredibly smug as he lifted his beer bottle. “I did.”

“I don’t suppose you’d care to share your methodology?”

Fury shrugged. “Experience. Good gut instincts. Pipeline to the future. Take your pick.”

“Right.” Coulson hadn’t really expected to get a straight answer. He took another drink of his beer. “Can I discuss something with you? Off the record?”

Fury eyed him. “That depends on what you want to discuss,” he said.

There was really no such thing as “off the record” at SHIELD, but there was a difference between Coulson putting something in a written report and talking it over with his boss. Fury knew how to keep secrets and play his cards better than anyone in the organization. The Director was also pretty judicious about who he shared information with.

“I’m not entirely sure Song should have been kept on this operation,” Coulson admitted. When it became clear after a moment that Fury was waiting for him to elaborate, Coulson sat up a little straighter in his chair. “She was emotionally compromised. She showed signs of it from the beginning of the mission.”

Fury just nodded at this information. “How bad?”

“Pretty bad,” Coulson said. 

“But you decided to keep her on the operation anyway.”

Coulson shook his head. “Barton was running the op, so I let him run the op. I left it up to him. He chose to keep her on.”

Unexpectedly, Fury chuckled. “Complicated situation you set up for yourself there, Phil. One of your agents having to give orders to his girlfriend.” Coulson must not have been able to keep his face impassive because Fury added, “What, you thought I didn’t know about that?”

“I guess I was shooting for plausible deniability,” Coulson said wryly.

“And how would you say it worked out?”

Coulson answered honestly. “Not perfectly, but they did work it out. At the end of the day, the mission was a win.”

“A big one,” Fury said, nodding. “Even some of the members of the Security Council are impressed. You rescued the hostage. We’re getting some good intel out of the three prisoners, enough that we can breathe a little easier on the HYDRA front. Looks like they’re more home-grown up-and-comers. There was only one glitch in the mission.”

“Martin Clancy.” Coulson put down his beer bottle.

“Hill’s already submitted her report,” Fury said.

“And?”

“And she reports that Agent Song stated that she had no choice but to kill Clancy, and that due to a comm failure no one had ears on what happened during the encounter.”

Coulson nodded. All fair, even if it didn’t sound that great. “Song’s the one who IDed Clancy, you know. She knew him.”

“What do you think I do with the reports you send to me? Line bird cages? Yeah, I know.” Fury leaned forward on his desk a bit, giving Coulson a knowing look. “And you’re thinking that maybe he knew something about her that she didn’t want him revealing to us under interrogation.”

Coulson grimaced a bit at hearing it stated so baldly and by Fury, no less. “I’d be lying if I said that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.”

And if it had crossed his mind, Coulson had known it had damn well crossed Fury’s. As it obviously had.

“Of course the thought crossed your mind, Phil. That’s what makes you so damn good at this job.” Fury sat back and picked up his beer again. “So, what are you planning to do about it?”

Coulson contemplated his beer bottle for a long moment before he answered. “Nothing.”

When he finally looked up, Fury gave him an approving nod.

“You know, Phil, SHIELD’s ideal is to always be professional and objective,” the Director said. “Now, I’m not saying that ideal is bad, but it only work so well in the real world. Song’s your agent, just like Barton is. I know what those two mean to you. The three of you aren’t objective about each other. You’re better for that.

“And I can’t help but think,” Fury added, “that one day that’ll be way more valuable than objectivity.”

Coulson allowed himself a few moments to digest this.

“Do you know something I don’t know?” he finally asked.

Fury looked very grave for a moment, then his face broke into a slow grin.

“Right,” Coulson said. “Ask a stupid question.”

 

_The End_


End file.
